
14 Police Officers Take Down a One-Legged Homeless Black Man Outside Twitter HQ - radmuzom
https://medium.com/matter/i-watched-14-police-officers-take-down-a-one-legged-homeless-black-man-outside-twitter-hq-1b3a9bf10e0f
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Mz
I am homeless. I did not read the entire article because the author really
does not know what happened yet assumes the worst about the police.

First, as someone who is both homeless and seriously handicapped, I feel the
article is offensive and dehumanizing to people like me for its clear
assumption that poverty and a handicap makes someone incapable of being a real
threat. That is beyond insulting and in no way helps get people like me and
our actual problems taken more seriously.

Second, although there is plenty of classicism in the world and this does
negatively impact my life, I think I am far more aware if its impact in online
forums than IRL. Some people IRL make my life unnecessarily harder with their
unfounded conclusions about me. More people online seem to dismiss the
possibility that I have a brain and something of value to contribute to the
conversation and so on.

Third, it is not uncommon for local cops to be familiar with local homeless
people. A high percentage of people on the street have either medical or
mental health issues. Many of them are self medicating with drugs or alcohol.
Society as a whole needs to come up with better solutions, but, while waiting
for those solutions, cops still need to protect the public from sometimes
irrational behaviour. If they know this guy and have a long history with him,
sending him to a hospital may be the most humane, compassionate answer
available.

I was woke up one night by a cop looking for another homeless person who was
wanted for violent assault. When I was woke up, it was very aggressive because
he was looking for a violent man and prepared for the worst. When he saw who I
was, he said "Oh, it's you. I know who you are. You can put your hands down."
He then went into social worker mode. I had not interacted directly with the
police in that town before but I was recognized and known to be not a
troublemaker.

The antidote to racism, sexism, classicism etc is to judge individuals as
individuals and take things on a case by case basis. This article is very
guilty of not doing that. It makes sweeping judgements of both the cops and
the individual they sent to a hospital, without knowing enough about what
happened to justify those conclusions.

There are a great many things wrong with how we deal with homelessness in this
country and I know racism, classicism, sexism etc are very real and do serious
harm to people. But I don't see this article helping in any way to solve that
problem.

~~~
devindotcom
Certainly we do not have perfect information here. But while it's possible
that three or four cops might be needed to take down someone irrational and
strong, there's no indication this was the case with the man in the article
(the author was there) and the numbers are way off — more than a dozen
officers.

I've worked with folks in situations perhaps similar to yours (I did social
work myself) and as part of that I had to work with the police too, and found
(like you say) a sort of ecosystem at work there. And knowing that I am more
willing to excuse certain behaviors by those on either side.

But did you watch the video? They were stomping on his prosthetic leg,
crushing his head into the ground. They weren't trying to take him to the
hospital, they were working to send him there.

That said, the way homelessness and mental illness are handled in this country
is generally speaking just plain bad. Social services are being cut all over
the place and everyone wants to pretend that doesn't have consequences. Not to
mention the treatment of vets, societal denial of mental illness, etc.

Anyway. It's a nasty business and never pretty, but what we've seen here is
inexcusable — and as others have pointed out, an everyday occurrence.

~~~
Mz
_But did you watch the video? They were stomping on his prosthetic leg,
crushing his head into the ground. They weren 't trying to take him to the
hospital, they were working to send him there_

I watched a portion of the video. That isn't what it looked like to me. It
looked to me like they were trying to reduce the odds of him smacking his head
on the sidewalk in his struggles. Furthermore, the article itself states that
although there were up to 14 police officers, many of them were trying to
shield the man from view. It assumes they were doing this for nefarious
reasons of covering up police brutality while simultaneously conplaining that
the man's butt became exposed and was on view. The author seems to not allow
for the possibility that cops were trying to hide the man's half naked state
from view, both to protect his privacy and protect passersby from something
most people would find offensive.

I have two special needs sons. As a parent, I am abundently familiar with how
hard it can be to prevent someone from endangering themselves or others
without looking like an abusive asshole in the process. But, then, my father
and ex husband were both career army, so I have very little patience with the
ignorance of many civilians who have never dealt with genuinely violent
situations. There are times when _please_ and _thank you_ simply do not work
and stronger methods are required.

~~~
devindotcom
Look, it sounds like you want to give the benefit of the doubt to the cops,
when there's a well-established trend of unarmed black men being targeted and
brutally suppressed by an overreaching and over-armed police authority. I
think it is disingenuous to award the benefit of the doubt to the police in
this situation.

Also, it is a long way from "please and thank you" to what we see in this
video. Police have a large variety of means at their disposal, as well as the
advantage of numbers and implicit authority. The way this man was subdued
appears to be way, _way_ over the top.

The only way we can really know for sure is if cops wear cameras. That's the
best solution all around.

~~~
Mz
In America, we have this principle called _innocent until proven guilty._ In
my own life, I have found that is a good rubric to apply. Applying anything
else makes racism, classicism, sexism, etc. _worse_ , not better. I have had
people call me naïve and told me "It looks like a duck, it quacks like a duck,
only a fool would believe it is not duck." But that kind of position only
deepens problems.

Of course, you are free to be driven by your personal biases. But arguing that
"it is a general trend, therefore waiting for actual evidence is foolish"
doesn't fly with me. It never has. It never will. I will continue to wait for
actual evidence and try to not jump to conclusions.

I am aware it is a hard path to take. It is a path I take regularly and I see
payoffs for trying my damnedest to stick to that path, in spite of how hard it
legitimately is.

------
MrDosu
I don't get it why Americans stand for this. It's not like this is happening
to minorities and the masses are just turning a blind eye. When I lived in the
US and was in contact with a cop every single time I felt like I was in
danger. Even though I did absolutely nothing wrong. And then the cop image is
portrayed on TV as the badass sheriff from the 1800s, no wonder these
individuals get all hyper ego in an emotional situation.

Back home our cops #1 priority is deescalation. This does not just happen.
There is training for this, a lot of training how to handle other people. For
example if someone is fleeing in a car, let him go. They will catch him later,
don't drive that dude in a corner in a high speed vehicle with 10 armed people
chasing him down in a manhunt. It only endangers people.

~~~
coldpie
> I don't get it why Americans stand for this.

Many of us don't, hence the protests and hundreds of articles that you've been
reading. But the truth is most voters don't have encounters the police. People
are taught from a very young age that police are the "good guys" keeping the
"bad guys" at bay, and so they get whatever protections and defenses they
think they need, including immunity from prosecution. But articles like this
and the protests over the various recent murders raise awareness that the
police are out of control. Change doesn't happen overnight and it doesn't
happen from nothing. These articles _are_ Americans refusing to stand for
this, and we need to keep it up.

~~~
MrDosu
I did not mean to generalize too much, there is plenty of protest in america
against this.

------
rm_-rf_slash
It is worth taking a step back and recalling how long the problem of police
brutality existed BEFORE it became a hot-button issue. For the longest time,
raising such issues would incite accusations that one is either sympathetic to
criminals or naively on the track to "Escape from NY" levels of crime.

Theodore Roosevelt regretted not having reformed American health care in his
time in office. It took this long to get the imperfect ACA. Police brutality
as a national issue is no different. Unless there is serious, sustained
momentum for change, it simply won't come. This video should be such a
reminder.

~~~
tsotha
Police brutality is in the headlines a lot recently because there are factions
that benefit from it politically. When that's no longer true it'll drop out of
the headlines regardless of what gets done.

I hope people who are sympathetic to doing something about it realize this.
They don't have an unlimited amount of time to come up with reasonable
proposals.

~~~
rm_-rf_slash
Correct, and fans of the Voting Rights Act should be there as a reminder that
"rights" can be hard lost as they are hard won. There is no inevitably in
humanity. The best we can expect is reproduction.

------
snurk
I don't see a problem; he was resisting and refused to comply. And he
continued to resist and fight even when he was on the ground. The article's
main complaint was that the police held him down.

There are an endless number of unbalanced and sociopathic people in the U.S.
who believe they're entitled to [EDIT: resist] the police, wrestle with them,
etc. You're not. And the solution to this so-called police "brutality" is to
simply be respectful, stop talking, and follow directions.

For sure, perhaps the police could have employed a more clever psychological
de-escalation technique. That'd be an interesting training issue to research
and borrow from other location that deploy it successfully.

But here was a person who was resisting arrest and disobeying instructions.

~~~
tired_man
Let's see you dance to that music after your leg is amputated.

They've had the training already.

Someone was sleeping on the days when descalation was covered. And they were
probably on vacation during the in-service stuff, too. <rolling eyes ;-)>

I fully agree that the best policy is to comply with directions, but I can't
see any reason for the number of responding officers.

I question why the SFPD allows those fos guys them to patrol without a
supervisor.

Why is it that they couldn't calm the guy down? Arrogance? Apathy? Or were
they all rookies? They couldn't holler for a detective or a supervisor?

Out-argued by a guy on crutches. What'd they think? He was going to somehow
run away from them? Sprout wings?

~~~
snurk
> What'd they think?

A principle in law enforcement is that someone who fights with police will be
just as aggressive, and more so, with non-police.

~~~
tired_man
Not relevant. So what? Was that drunk capable of fleeing and attacking anyone?
Not likely. Is it hard to pursue a person fleeing on crutches for a few yards
until you can kick a crutch out from him? It's not rocket science.

Sure, he was a big damned nuisance and they couldn't let him get whacko.
Playing dogpile on a UNARMED disabled guy isn't ever going to be the right
answer.

They mishandled that situation.

------
tired_man
Holy crap! It's darned lucky they had so many officers handy!

That dude might have turned his crutches into some sort of martial arts weapon
and killed hundreds of people! Hell, they could be some advanced flight system
that would have let him ram the TransAmerica building and destroy it!

If that guy'd had both legs, they would have needed twice as many officers,
SWAT, and an armored vehicle. I'm thankful the casualty list was so low. Oh,
wait... No casualties? Even better!

Thanks, SFPD, for ridding the streets of another deadly terrorist!

/utter disgust.

~~~
branchan
Your wildly sarcastic comment genuinely elevated the quality of comments we
have here on Hacker News. Thank you.

~~~
tired_man
Probably, not. I'll work on that.

------
redml
A guy resisting arrest makes front page on hacker news because its near
twitter HQ? Seriously?

~~~
FireBeyond
It's got a lot better, but in years past we've had stories make front page
because someone got shot near Facebook, and a serious car accident near
Twitter HQ.

------
davelnewton
Obviously my first thought was "Yeah, but we don't know anything about the leg
or the militarized prosthetic on the other one.

~~~
sitkack
What if the prosthetic leg had IoT LiPo and SIMD? Freak'n mecha kung fury
kicks with TLB page faults!

