
Protests about police brutality are met with wave of police brutality across US - miles
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jun/06/police-violence-protests-us-george-floyd
======
fit2rule
A nation which allows itself to be willingly ruled by war criminals is, first
and foremost, a victim of its own cowardice.

The American People will never be safe until they properly prosecute their war
criminals. American policing organisations are riddled with very real war
criminals calling the shots.

Don't be so surprised that what these people did to Iraq and Afghanistan and
Libya and Yemen, they will do to the American people.

~~~
readarticle
The 18000 law enforcement agencies in the US are overwhelmingly controlled at
the local and state levels.

While a simplistic “get rid of the war criminals at the top” would be a nice
solution, the reality of the problem is far scarier and more distributed than
that.

~~~
fit2rule
The same policies and culture that allow Americans to demolish, with impunity,
countless other sovereign states while proclaiming their own moral authority,
are what's at stake here in the streets today.

America has been kneeling on the neck of countless other nations, which also
lost their breath, for decades.

A nation which callously disregards these crimes, will eventually fall victim
to the same mechanics, itself.

America is ruled by a death cult which believes only in its own superiority
over all other nations on Earth. Until this changes, the American people are
as safe as anyone else this very real death cult puts in its sights, which is
to say: not safe at all.

~~~
readarticle
My local police department is “ruled” by a city council composed of lawyers
and real estate agents.

~~~
fit2rule
And I'm sure none of them served in one of America's illegal wars, where
crimes against humanity were written off with impunity multiple times.

------
kstenerud
With so many guns in the USA, I'm a bit surprised that people haven't started
shooting the police...

~~~
sneak
As was pointed out in sibling comments, most of the people who are the most
upset with police are unarmed.

The overlap between armed and police resistance is still small, but I hope it
grows: not so that people can shoot at the police, but that so the balance of
power shifts in a larger fashion and the police no longer feel safe in
blatantly assaulting people, much the same way non-police feel now about
attacking police with sticks and tear gas and “less lethal” projectiles.

They don’t do it because they know their counterparty can and will immediately
escalate to potentially lethal force.

Counterintuitively, more arms results in more peace. The violence that is
happening now results from the massive available-force imbalance. The police
feel safe assaulting and murdering anyone they want, the only recourse against
them being neutered by widespread co-conspirator testilying by LEOs.

The average person will need to stop trusting unsubstantiated cop testimony
(feds included) before the systemic racism starts to decline.

I imagine that by the end of the year we will see lots of non-gun-owners
beginning to question why all of the draconian restrictions on firearms
ownership apply only to civilians and not the police.

Good police or bad police (and we know it’s the latter), that is a huge power
imbalance ripe for abuse.

~~~
maest
> Counterintuitively, more arms results in more peace.

That's controversial at best. Arguably, part of the reason the police is so
aggressive and distrustful when interacting with regular people is the higher
gun density in the country.

I mean, maybe if you chart violence (y axis) vs percentage of gun ownership (x
axis), you get a bell curve and the US is in an awkward middle position. But
that's a maybe, and, anyway, that means that both increasing and decreasing
the number of weapons would reduce violence in that case.

~~~
sneak
> _Arguably, part of the reason the police is so aggressive and distrustful
> when interacting with regular people is the higher gun density in the
> country._

The vast majority of police violence we witness in the US is against totally
unarmed people. I think this gives the police far too much credit. Being a
police officer is actually a very safe job to begin with, and violent crime in
the US has been decreasing steadily for decades.

In fact, most of the worst offending police departments are the places in the
US where the incidence of civilian gun ownership, legal or otherwise, is
lowest: New York, Boston, Chicago, LA.

The cops simply don't need an excuse for violence, they're violent even, or
perhaps because, the public they attack are unarmed.

The Black Panthers had it right.

------
SethTro
Some of this is being documented on Github.

[https://github.com/2020PB/police-
brutality/tree/master/repor...](https://github.com/2020PB/police-
brutality/tree/master/reports)

There are several open issues that tech could help out on (IPFS backup, front
end for viewing, ...)

------
swarnie_
Considering i've seen armies less well equipped then your police force and
civilian population i think its a miracle the shooting hasn't started yet.

Y'all ever considered gun control or is that taboo? Maybe if you weren't all
armed like you're going to a Texan wedding your law enforcement wouldn't have
to be as well?

~~~
CamperBob2
_Y 'all ever considered gun control or is that taboo?_

"The police are completely out of control. They're basically a street gang
funded by tax dollars. Officers with dozens of complaints are sent back to the
streets with almost literal _carte blanche_ to run roughshod over minorities
without a trace of accountability. Their propensity for violence and
escalation has practically torn our entire country in half, while prosecutors
look the other way and city officials stand by helplessly. Also, they should
have all the guns."

Makes perfect sense. /s

~~~
swarnie_
Because you militarised them.

I'm sure walking 2 steps further down the wrong road will eventually get you
to the right place.

Also i thought the point of the 2nd amendment was so you could rise up and
overthrow a tyrannical government. Go shoot some cops and let me know how that
works out. I'll wait.

~~~
CamperBob2
_Also i thought the point of the 2nd amendment was so you could rise up and
overthrow a tyrannical government. Go shoot some cops and let me know how that
works out. I 'll wait._

It turns out that you don't need to shoot any cops. You just show up armed to
the teeth, and they leave you alone. They'll even stand aside while you muscle
your way into state and Federal government buildings. (Of course, this only
works if you're white, but never mind that.)

~~~
dragonwriter
That works a lot better if you are in a political faction overrepreesented in
law enforcement.

Other armed (or even merely suspected to be armed) people see a more violent,
not less violent, response by police.

~~~
CamperBob2
_Other armed (or even merely suspected to be armed) people see a more violent,
not less violent, response by police._

Correct, and we're being told that the solution to that is to take away
_their_ arms. This is, of course, perfectly consistent with the original
political motivation behind gun control.

Statistically speaking, if your death has a violent cause, it will happen at
the hands of your own country's police or military forces. That's not a
concern here in the modern-day US, but this is a historical aberration, one
that may not prevail for much longer. Unilateral disarmament probably isn't
the best strategy.

------
tsimionescu
It is revolting and amazing to me to see the lengths to which police in the
self-styled freest country in the world go to brutally repress these protests;
and even more so, the fact that there still exists some defense of their
behavior in the media.

In my own country, a former communist country in Eastern Europe, there were
last year some anti-government protests that ended one night with the police
gratuitously shooting tear gas at the crowd. This caused widespread outrage
and was universally covered in the press. They didn't dare do it on subsequent
protest nights again, and it remained a subject of discussion for months, with
almost no defense even from the more government-friendly news outlets.

~~~
082349872349872
They haven't even reached "brutally" yet.

Dr. King advocated non-violent, economic, protest on 3.4.1968
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23414101](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23414101)
On 4.4.1968 they showed him the violence inherent in the system.

Do you have any good anti-authority songs in your country? I've been trying to
think of what might be good ones in the US tradition.

    
    
        In the shadow of the steeple I saw my people, 
        By the relief office I seen my people; 
        As they stood there hungry, I stood there asking 
        Is this land made for you and me?
    

But that's an ancient one... probably the kids are way ahead of me on this
front?

~~~
tsimionescu
We do have one [0], from 1990, a series of protests right after the 1989
revolution (the protests were violently squashed by miners with pickaxes
summoned by the president of that time).

It goes something like this (in a somewhat word for word translation, and
keeping in mind that the big bad at the time were leaders of the former
communist party):

    
    
        Better a vagrant,
        Than a traitor,
        Better a hooligan,
        Than a dictator,
        Better a hoodlum,
        Than a party activist,
        Better dead,
        Then a communist
    

[0]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lSlUW5Imylc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lSlUW5Imylc)

~~~
082349872349872
mersi — this is about the protestors, was it ever sung by them?

(coincidentally, YT just suggested
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJTOD5jjac4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJTOD5jjac4)
)

~~~
tsimionescu
I was too young back then, but my impression is that this was sort of sung in
concert among the protesters.

I may be wrong and it may have been after the fact though, I'm not entirely
sure.

The lyrical voice is meant to represent the voice of the protesters, for what
that's worth - it's not singing about 'them', but about 'us'.

That related video is pretty sad to see - one of the greatest freedom fighter
and labor rights[0] protest songs, perverted as a commercial for some Netflix
TV series...

[0] in case you haven't heard it before, there's an even older version then
the anti fascist one, which was a protest song from the women working the rice
paddies in 19th century Italy:
[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6CW6l-A1rnk](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6CW6l-A1rnk)

~~~
082349872349872
grazie! I hadn't heard that one.

The wobblies anticipated Portal's "The Cake is a Lie" with "Pie in the Sky":

    
    
        Work and pray, live on hay
        You'll get pie in the sky when you die, that's a lie
    

but later got googlebombed:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EH6n71-zctE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EH6n71-zctE)

(it's also bleakly amusing to have learned from Youtube that Paul Robeson —up
until they cancelled his passport— sang different words to "Old Man River" in
the US and in the USSR)

On a lighter note, it seems US kids do still sing "This Land"
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRnHx3yVuf4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRnHx3yVuf4)

------
noble_pleb
Its a vicious cycle, unfortunately. The more rioting and violent protest goes
on the streets, the more they will empower the police and thus even more
chance for future brutality.

~~~
siberianbear
If the police ignore hooliganism on the streets, it just invites more
hooliganism.

If the police brutally put down hooliganism, it also invites more hooliganism.

Probably, the right solution involves better policing of police, and throwing
out the bad apples. But police culture is very insular, and their labor unions
have quite a bit of political power. They protect their own. So, that's easier
said than done.

It's quite a catch-22 situation.

~~~
tsimionescu
Regarding your first few statements, there is also a third option between
ignoring the "hooligans" and brutally repressing them. It is listening to them
and acquiescing to their very simple and legitimate demands - no more police
brutality.

I agree with your note about policing the police though, and the difficulties
in doing that. Probably trying to reduce the power of police, and its role in
society, will be more feasible than trying to get prosecutors to work against
their colleagues in the force.

------
hereme888
Alright this is nonsense.

Only a tiny, miniscule percentage of police are criminals. They are by far
amazing people who protect us.

The protesters are largely the violent ones, burning cars and destroying
property, empowered by paid professionals and criminals like ANTIFA (which
coincidentally are fascists themselves).

Let a court and jury judge based on a complete set of evidence, rather than
the edited video clips being collected. From what I've seen, the entire videos
of what these protesters do oaint a different picture.

And why is news like this even allowed on HN? Its what gets fights and
trolling started.

~~~
tsimionescu
As can be seen in the current protests, it is overwhelmingly the police that
is the source of real violence. Killing or hurting even one person is
incomparably worse than smashing a few cars or breaking some windows.

And the justice system has also been very visibly complicit with police
brutality, almost universally excusing the actions of murderers when those
murderers were policemen and women 'doing their duty'. In basically all of the
high profile police murders that have rocked the nation, the murderers got
away with it so far. So trust in the system is justifiably at an all time low.

~~~
lostmsu
Oh really? How about that list?

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Floyd_protests#Deaths](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Floyd_protests#Deaths)

Mind you this is not a pepper spray or flashangs which are relatively
harmless.

~~~
tsimionescu
Out of the list you provided we have the following deaths:

1\. 3 Shop owner killed alleged looter / passerby

2\. 4 Killed by police

3\. 8 Killed by protesters/rioters/looters

4\. 5 Other deaths

And that is assuming all of the looters are part of the protests, when in fact
at least 2-3 of the deaths in category 3 could also be black protesters
targeted by radicals, or simply robberies happening around the actual
protests.

In the meantime, there are 25 separate police violence incidents on the same
wiki page, with another 50 against journalists collected by a journalist. The
same page reports 7 incidents of violence against the police and 4 against
non-police.

So I believe my point stands. Not to mention that the police should always be
held at a higher standard of conduct and respect for the law than random
people.

