
N.Y.P.D. Says It Used Restraint During Protests. Here’s What the Videos Show - TeaDrunk
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/07/14/nyregion/nypd-george-floyd-protests.html
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djsumdog
> A video of five or 10 or 30 seconds does not tell the whole story, of
> course. It does not depict what happened before the camera started rolling.
> It is unclear from the videos, for instance, what the officers’ intentions
> were or why protesters were being arrested or told to move.

It's right there in the article, after you scroll past all the videos. Many of
these videos are totally missing their context. Here in Chicago, I saw police
force a woman to the concrete as she was screaming ... after she threw
something into a police cruiser that set it on fire.

Why did we see so much more violence from these protests than we've ever seen
before? Part of it is COVID and the anxiety from being bottle up and out of
work, but part of it is also the normalization of the masks:

[https://battlepenguin.com/politics/secondary-
effects/#masks-...](https://battlepenguin.com/politics/secondary-
effects/#masks-hurt-our-perceptions-of-one-another)

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pmiller2
Your post is missing context as well. Was anyone injured when the cruiser was
set on fire? Was the woman armed? Was she literally any sort of physical
threat to the officer or officers who threw her to the ground?

~~~
refurb
Maybe I’m some sort of fascist, but I have zero problems with an officer using
force to arrest someone who firebombed a police car, regardless of anyone was
injured or she was an immediate threat after.

~~~
Synaesthesia
I’ve seen so many examples of excessive and unwarranted force from the US
police, by now hundreds of incidents.

~~~
refurb
I'm not excusing excessive force, I'm saying fire bombing in general is a
felony and police should be able to arrest a suspect and use force if they
don't comply (obviously reasonable force).

~~~
pmiller2
There is no evidence in the comment about this incident that indicates the
suspect resisted in any way. This is what I meant about "missing context."

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coldtea
Constraint for the US police means not shooting live rounds into the crowd.

From the transition from British royal subjects to US citizens, some of the
"subjects" part stuck...

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RickJWagner
There are 4 kinds of lies.

Lies

Damn lies

Statistics

Selectively chosen video snippets

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gruez
Are there video snippets out there that show a different story? Or is this
just a general plea of "well we don't know the whole story so we should
reserve judgement until later(when everyone has forgotten about it)"?

"Lies" implies there's an intent to deceive, but most of these cases the
reason why the rest of the footage isn't available is because people only
start recording when things go south, so everything leading up to the event
inevitably gets left out. That's very different than "Selectively chosen video
snippets", which imply that somewhere there's footage of the whole incident,
but anti-police activists are editing the footage to generate maximum outrage.
It also doesn't help that some police officers think that recording is an act
of aggression, further making the footage harder to acquire.

~~~
RickJWagner
Use Google, check for 'New York Cops attacked'. You should find several
reputable news sites showing police officers being attacked and beaten.

Watch for yourself. Decide where you think the truth lies. I think I could
videotape just about any street fight and selectively choose when and for how
long to show a clip to fit an agenda....

~~~
xtiansimon
> "Watch for yourself. Decide where you think the truth lies."

Capital "T" truth does not lie solely in a video clip. Just as with _literally
everything_ online and everything digital, we need to be good _consumers_.

In the case of the George Floyd killing the is a witness video (over 10
minutes), security camera video (over 5 minutes), plus officer body camera.
These of course have POV issues, audio issues which need to be considered.
Despite these defects, there is the narrative of Officer Derek Chauvin
kneeling on George Floyd's neck for over 8 minutes, which is evidence of the
cause of Mr Floyd's death.

I have yet to read any comments here which take seriously how this firehose of
brutality videos should be consumed--let alone making _any_ decisions about
"truth".

When I was a young adult, the biggest issue concerning the internet was the
potential danger of anonymous people online. Post Facebook, the danger was
putting something online now, that you'll regret later.

Today, impact of the videos from the George Floyd killing is enormous.

What about the next video? I would like to hear more about thoughts on
consuming videos, and presumed truth of any video.

And watching just some of those videos was sickening. All of this violence is
sickening.

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AdmiralAsshat
They did.

This is "restrained" by their standards.

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mnm1
What I see is most cops not wearing masks. So from the get go they are out to
kill people. That says more about their mindset than anything could and proves
that it's not just one bad apple but the entire profession that's out to harm
and murder people. Fuck them and their supporters.

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d0ugie
Case closed then, F policing as a profession and everyone who sees it as a
vital component to a civilized society? NYPD are well aware that they are
vulnerable to this virus and in turn to spreading it not just to you but to
other cops, but in order to keep a lid on rioting, while growing increasingly
shorthanded in number, in tools, maneuvers, plainclothes units, or effecting
arrests (regardless of the disinterest in those being prosecuted), they need
all the oxygen they can get. I'm not saying that $42,500 is not enough money
in NYC, just that this is an exigent need for oxygen, not biological warfare.

~~~
mnm1
They can get their fucking oxygen through their fucking masks like everyone
else. When they start wearing masks, I'll consider seeing them as human beings
again. Until then, they are just walking coronavirus factories who murder
people in other ways too.

