
Git Repo of Police Brutality During the 2020 George Floyd Protests - Glench
https://github.com/2020PB/police-brutality#hn
======
tedunangst
If you think there's missing context, submit a pull request with a link?

Here in philly, police insisted they tear gassed protestors because they were
in imminent danger. Two weeks later, they failed to find any evidence to
support that, despite many camera angles. Finally issued an apology. Turns out
the other side of the story was actually the same as the protestors' side;
they just didn't want to admit it.

~~~
downandout
_Missing_ context implies that their failure to provide it was an oversight.
There was not even an attempt at providing context here, because doing so
would be unpopular.

~~~
klyrs
With cops wearing body cams, that evidence should be abundant. Its absence
_is_ telling.

Collecting evidence is pretty much job #1 for the police. Without that, they
can't establish guilt of the accused.

When dozens of cops were involved in a beatdown and not a single one can
produce a shred of evidence, we assume that the protesters were innocent.

~~~
BLKNSLVR
> Collecting evidence is pretty much job #1 for the police.

Excellent point. If denial / lack of evidence is the SoP for any Police
Department, what are they even doing? Defense Lawyers would barely have to
work for their pay.

------
throwvid19
The number of comments in here that ask for additional/richer data and are
being flagged is supremely concerning.

I understand that this is a hot issue with very polarized sides, but in what
kinds of circumstances is having more data _bad_ , except to intentionally
support bias?

Please understand that my question is _only_ to understand why, in the context
of accumulating data, is trying to obtain more/better data NOT a good thing?

I do not wish to debate what is already being said in the many comments
already, so if it helps to change the context of the data in question in order
to discuss, that sounds like a good idea to me.

~~~
SauciestGNU
I think context is good and we should be wary of videos that have been edited
to remove critical information.

However, there is such a large corpus of evidence against the police in these
protests, I have to wonder if the people asking for more context are doing so
in good faith, or rather to argue for the innocence of the police. Having been
personally on the receiving end of police violence during these protests, it
bothers me that anyone could look at this wealth of videos and see anything
other than a clear pattern of institutional violence being wielded against
those who are in opposition to just such violence.

~~~
systemvoltage
One thing that comes to my mind (note: I do not support this view) but I am
trying to put myself into the opposite party's shoes:

\- Listing videos of police brutality during protests without also listing
videos of protestors brutally attacking the police perhaps creates a
dissonance to the counter party?

I think there have been a few incidents were cops were attacked but they are
far and few between, but listing those would help clear the accussation of
hypocrisy.

Furthermore, I personally think that we should separate police brutality
videos in normal civic life (before the protests began) to gather evidence of
systemic violence vs. the enraged/emotionally outraged protests that both
sides were not willing to concede. I categorize them as different.

~~~
SauciestGNU
I really doubt there's more than a handful of instances in which protesters
use violence against the police in a context that's not self-defense.

------
ilikehurdles
Well organized and useful resource.

Edit: Oh nice, there are backups of videos as well, and there's even an ipfs
source.

------
Glench
Resubmitted as per this comment from a moderator:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23401418](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23401418)

~~~
novia
thanks for getting this out there

------
enriquto
There is a similar site for the spanish violence against the catalan
referendum of 2017:
[https://spanishpolice.github.io/](https://spanishpolice.github.io/)

In that case, unfortunately, the videos are only stored on youtube and
twitter, so you cannot backup them easily just by cloning the repo.

~~~
LyalinDotCom
I really worry about videos being lost, almost feels like someone should do an
archive every so often and put it up as torrents that many people can help
backup. Just a thought

~~~
trickstra
[https://archivebox.io/](https://archivebox.io/)

------
thelock85
These contributors should partner with [https://raheem.ai](https://raheem.ai)
which is trying to make it easier and less intimidating to report instances of
police misconduct.

------
downandout
As a person that makes decisions based on data, rather than emotions, it would
be interesting to see a comparison of the volume of such incidents on both
sides. Is there a similar repo of the looting and violence committed by
protesters? I think that would give a more accurate picture of all of this. We
would then know if the police brutality incidents paled in comparison to
violence/looting by the public, or vice versa.

~~~
triceratops
> Is there a similar repo of the looting and violence committed by protesters?

Does it matter? They're being investigated and prosecuted regardless[1],
because they're criminals. We expect police to behave _better than criminals_.

Society is always going to have some crime, and we will continue to
investigate and prosecute it. But there should be zero tolerance for crimes by
cops. Otherwise we can't trust them, and everyone becomes less safe.

1\. [https://www.theverge.com/2020/6/18/21295301/philadelphia-
pro...](https://www.theverge.com/2020/6/18/21295301/philadelphia-protester-
arson-identified-social-media-etsy-instagram-linkedin)

~~~
downandout
_Does it matter?_

Where crimes, such as burglary and assault, are being committed, police will
generally be called upon to act. A subset of those responses will involve
police violence. One would hope that such police violence only occurs in self
defense, but we know that to not always be the case. So yes, the two things
are mathematically correlated. One drives the other. It would be interesting
to be able to tell what the incidence rate is, rather than just seeing a group
of cherry-picked incidents designed with the sole intent of satisfying the
public's appetite for a specific narrative.

~~~
Uehreka
It’s one thing to say “given there will be crime, and some criminals are
violent, cops may have to be violent sometimes to stop criminals”. That’s a
pretty bloodless analysis.

Let’s get to the fun part: “if cops perceive someone to be a criminal, how
violent will we allow them to be, relative to how violent the perceived
criminal is?”

In the case of the cops assaulting that vigil for Elijah McClain (it was a
peaceful gathering with people listening to a couple violin players) I’d argue
that the cops were perpetrating violence at a level about 100x relative to the
people they were trying to police (even if you consider that folks may have
been “yelling mean things” at them).

Personally, I would consider 1.1x acceptable, maybe 1.5x in some situations.
And so every time I see cops blowing through that threshold and being even 5x
or 10x more violent than the people they’re policing, I perceive that as a
massive injustice, I think those cops should get fired, and I get pretty
angry.

~~~
SpelingBeeChamp
Serious question: do you think that police officers should have to accept
themselves to getting hurt as part of their job? Meaning, that it's actually
an expectation the public has of police officers that they will get hurt if
someone is fighting with them. To me, that seems like the inevitable
consequence of not quickly taking control using decisive force. That's the
issue I think exists with 1:1.1 response. It doesn't stop the unlawful
behavior. No?

~~~
Uehreka
We can talk about that when they get down to like, 3x to 5x force.

Right now we are seeing video after video of cops tear gassing civilians for
throwing empty water bottles at them, running over civilians using SUVs for
"refusing to disperse" and knocking out old folks who are going "Hey man, what
if this is a bad idea though?".

The ratio right now is so high, the kinds of conversations you may want to
have aren't even relevant.

------
forgotmypw17
Every link in that repo needs to also be archived as a video file into that
repo, to protect against link rot.

~~~
TouchyJoe
how can this amount of video footage be backed up?

~~~
forgotmypw17
Is it really that much?

------
heavyset_go
Is there a torrent going?

------
zaroth
I think at the very least the title should be Git Repo of _Alleged_ Police
Brutality During the 2020 George Floyd Protests.

Like another commenter downthread, I spent some time looking through incident
reports in my own State, and found some of them to either be simply
unsubstantiated claims, or videos of police reasonably appearing to be doing
the very dangerous job of managing a riot.

There are valid concerns of the validity and objectivity of many of these
alleged incident reports. By commingling the few truly reprehensible actions
with objectively necessary riot control, the site loses its objectivity and
fairness, and does harm to its intended goal. In Reddit parlance, it becomes a
circle jerk.

I think the fundamental problem with many of these incidents is that the
provocation of rioting has been used, not in all cases but certainly in many,
to incite a police response which is then filmed and condemned as if
unprovoked or unnecessary.

The vast majority of police are heroes. And every community depends on their
police to provide a mission critical service. The ability of police to provide
this service in cities like Minneapolis and NYC has been dramatically
curtailed by a violent political uprising which has damaged billions of
dollars of property and driven homicide rates up nearly 100% year over year.

IMO the fatal flaw in the response to protests against police is to send
police to stand in front of them and take the abuse. You don’t put protesters
and counter-protests next to each other to face off. It seems to me
particularly unfair and indignant to have black police officers on the line
being screamed at by white protesters about Black Lives Matter, to stand
silently while they are verbally denigrated and abused for doing their job,
which can lawfully include using force to disperse a riot. If the target of a
large protest is the police themselves, the National Guard should be called in
to provide crowd control and defend life and property if needed. This has the
double benefit of not providing a standing target for the protesters ire, and
not creating a self-fulfilling prophecy / feedback loop of aggression.

~~~
triceratops
> The vast majority of police are heroes.

Define "hero". As has been noted many, many times across HN these past few
weeks, "police officer" isn't even among the top 15 most dangerous professions
in America. And even then police aren't legally required to do their job[1].
Most police are never called upon to do anything heroic, so we can't say if
they are heroes or not.

This type of blind veneration for police is weird and unhealthy. If you tell a
child, or even an adult, they are great and perfect just for who they are,
they're going to turn out spoiled rotten. Why do you think this is any
different?

Police are regular people. Some good, some bad, but mostly mixed. The systems
they work in allow the bad police to get away with horrific crimes and punish
the good police who try to do anything about it.

1\. [https://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/28/politics/justices-rule-
po...](https://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/28/politics/justices-rule-police-do-
not-have-a-constitutional-duty-to-protect.html)

~~~
zaroth
USA Today says that policing is the 18th most dangerous job in the US.

What makes police injuries and deaths notable from other occupations is that
“The most common cause of workplace fatalities among police officers is direct
violence from other people”.

It is not just a risky job in general, it is a risky job due to people that
would intentionally do them harm, done in service of their community. Everyone
is a regular person, but that is why people generally regard police as heroic.

In fact, police are _expected_ to act heroically when the situation calls for
it. The Parkland officer who didn’t enter the school during the shooting,
caught on tape remaining outside while shots were fired, was rightly condemned
as not fit for duty.

[1] - [https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2019/01/08/most-
dangero...](https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2019/01/08/most-dangerous-
jobs-us-where-fatal-injuries-happen-most-often/38832907/)

~~~
triceratops
> The Parkland officer who didn’t enter the school during the shooting...was
> rightly condemned as not fit for duty.

But then got his job and pension back with the full backing of his
union[1][2]. This is what I mean by the system propping up bad cops. If the
"vast majority" of cops are heroes, why are they supporting someone who has
demonstrated a distinct lack of heroism? Isn't he making the rest of them look
bad? Don't they care?

1\.
[https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/05/15/fac...](https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/05/15/fact-
check-parkland-officer-who-failed-act-shooting-gets-job-back/5194831002/)

2\.
[https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/broward/art...](https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/broward/article242719216.html)

~~~
monocasa
He also got back pay, with back overtime.

~~~
zaroth
Yeah, I never said I was pro-union, but there was certainly widespread
condemnation of that officer’s response.

~~~
triceratops
So basically no real consequences.

I'm sympathetic to people losing their nerve. It's a human reaction and can
happen to anyone. But no way should he be allowed to keep his job after he's
shown how unfit for it he is.

And the fact that the other cops didn't raise a peep over it tells me that
most cops are in fact not heroes. Heroes do the right thing even when it's
hard, you see. That's not an insult. I would like a society where policing
doesn't have to be heroic. It's just a statement of fact.

------
TheGrim-888
Just a reminder that none of this is factual or evidence. It COULD be, but
just because somebody writes something doesn't make it true.

You are not given any of the context of what happened in these situations. If
there's video the video starts when the conflict is already full swing, you're
not seeing anything that led up to the situation.

You can read "Police showed up and fired tear gas and agitated the crowd and
caused violence", but you're not told WHY they fired tear gas. You're not
given the context as to what happened.

Not only are you not given the context, but you're only given one side of the
story. I'm sure if you asked the police what happened, their story would be
completely different. But you're only being allowed to get the story from one
side, and that side is insanely politically motivated to exaggerate, and do
everything they can to make the police look bad, because it strengths their
political positions.

~~~
isbjorn16
> Not only are you not given the context, but you're only given one side of
> the story. I'm sure if you asked the police what happened, their story would
> be completely different. But you're only being allowed to get the story from
> one side, and that side is insanely politically motivated to exaggerate, and
> do everything they can to make the police look bad, because it strengths
> their political positions.

Is that... is that not exactly, precisely, what we should be expecting from
the police side as well? I think that's the entire point, isn't it? At best,
their credibility has been called into question. At worst, their credibility
has been drug out into the street and kneeled on until it expired.

~~~
rootusrootus
I recall reading that some localities have already made changes to their body
camera recording rules which rule video footage inadmissible if it has been
edited to remove context.

~~~
SpelingBeeChamp
I don't buy it. It is unlikely that the rules of evidence are being changed. I
could always be wrong, though. Got a source?

~~~
rootusrootus
Sorry, I was a little unclear in that post and probably made it sound more
legal (as in, courtroom) than I intended. What I meant is that some police
departments have announced that they will not allow edited or out-of-context
footage from body cams by police officers facing administrative action. You're
right in that courtroom rules of evidence are not subject to such decrees.

------
mjcohen
Gonna need terabytes.

~~~
ImaCake
I'm not sure if you are serious but even millions of events recorded in text
would not take up too much space. Bioinformatics datasets that run into the
millions of lines still only require a few gigabytes, and they are often
compressed into tarballs which can halve their size.

Moore's law is on the side of the protesters here, this information can spread
_easily_ because it does not require much bandwidth (without video) for anyone
to `git pull remote` this whole repository.

I hope that helps explain why some people have downvoted you without
explanation (for the record, I did not).

------
schaefer
Las Vegas: \- the police shot a man. \- a man shot the police.

neither incident appear in this data set.

------
overfl0w
Now all we need is a similar repo for the looting and memorial vandalism.

~~~
goto11
Wouldn't that be a job for the police? Their job is (lest we forget it) to
prevent crime and enforce the law.

~~~
overfl0w
Sure but they are not in a public git repo and I think the public has the
right to see the full story. The police are the easiest target right now but
those people who take advantage on the riots to loot are kind of left out of
sight.

------
Koshkin
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I'm_Gonna_Git_You_Sucka](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I'm_Gonna_Git_You_Sucka)

------
mothsonasloth
The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

I will watch this repository, but I think it will be another showman piece
which will join the many other repositories that are forgotten about and left
to go stale on Github.

Why? Well if you look at some of the contributors, they all have new accounts
generated around June, and some have a history of creating fad'ish
repositories, probably to massage their ego online.

This repository has some good content but also a lot of "weak" to "non-
existent" examples.

~~~
cvlasdkv
Ultimately there is enough evidence to make a decision already--the case of
police brutality is nothing as invisible or insidious as something like the
sexual assault or harassment revealed by the #MeToo movement. I am not sure
this repository accomplishes anything, especially as reports do not seem to be
well vetted, but it would be nice if cleaned up to have a list of examples.

------
readme
The problem here is that police are not infallible but everyone wants them to
be. If there is violence in humanity you would be naive to think police would
be exempted from it. That is why I don't like coverage like this: why not also
catalog some of the good things police do? That wouldn't further your point,
so why would you do it?

~~~
seth_tr
The police don't acknowledge that these were mistake[1][2][3]. They think this
is the system working. They act in bad faith and so please don't run around
grant them good faith in arguments.

We want the systems that enable this brutality changed.

This is like saying "Facebook does some good things so let's ignore the
systematic problems it causes" or "Facebook is staffed by people so we have to
accept an amount of them stalking their exes with internal tools"

[1] [https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/05/us/buffalo-police-
shove-p...](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/05/us/buffalo-police-shove-
protester-unrest.html) "Fifty-seven officers resigned from the department’s
Emergency Response Team in solidarity with the two who were suspended." [2]
[https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8436929/Atlanta-
cop...](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8436929/Atlanta-cops-no-work-
today-city-claims-handle-911-calls.html) [3]
[https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/13/us/why-police-rally-around-
ea...](https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/13/us/why-police-rally-around-each-other-
trnd/index.html)

~~~
readme
Why not go find me three links to instances where the police did acknowledge
their mistakes?

~~~
seth_tr
I searched google for "police acknowledgement mistake" and several variations.
The closest I could find was people calling for the police to acknowledge
their mistakes. I can't find the police doing it themselves.

~~~
readme
thanks for the due dilligence

edit:
[https://www.google.com/search?q=%22police%20admit%20to%22](https://www.google.com/search?q=%22police%20admit%20to%22)

170,000 results

~~~
ZeikJT
I think a better link is probably:
[https://www.google.com/search?q=%22police+admit+to%22&tbs=qd...](https://www.google.com/search?q=%22police+admit+to%22&tbs=qdr:m)

Though it doesn't give a number of results explicitly there are still several
pages of results (though they'd need to be deduped)

------
throwawaysea
From what I saw on Twitter, most of the videos alleging police using force
without reason were misleading, and leaving out all the footage preceding
police action. In cases where others uploaded longer videos or different
angles, it was clear that protesters were acting illegally, or ignoring clear
verbal warnings, or refusing lawful orders to disperse, and so on. By leaving
those crucial additional bits out, activists were generating outrage online
where none was deserved. The same applies here, and I encourage people to take
resources like this with a grain of salt.

~~~
spaetzleesser
I don't like this US attitude where people think that once police has given an
order to do something you have to comply immediately or you can be shot or run
over no matter the situation. I just saw a video where protesters were
crowding a police and suddenly the car sped up and ran over people because the
cops felt "threatened". Thats just not OK.

~~~
noahtallen
This is key. For the sake of argument, let’s assume that unarmed protestors
are being very aggressive towards police, even ignoring orders to disperse or
follow curfew. Perhaps they are even verbally threatening police!

Should this give police authority to use violent force to retaliate? (E.g.
pepper spray, rubber bullets, fists, etc)

In my opinion, no. I realize that legally, police are protected in these
scenarios. Hell, most folks understand that. That’s what people are protesting
for: they want the legal system to change.

As a society, I think we morally accept using force in self defense (for
example, using pepper spray on an assaulter). We accept it even if someone’s
life isn’t actually in danger. Should we accept the same from police? I doubt
it. We should hold the protectors of the law to higher standards than common
citizens, right? I myself might not fully understand the law and will be
acting on my emotional response if I use force in self defense. But police
officers should have the training to understand much better when lives are
actually in danger. They should have techniques to handle situations like this
without violence.

These videos show that whether or not the police were acting out of self
defense or within the boundaries of the law, they are still using serious
force on unarmed citizens. This is not ok whether or not the citizens are in
the right.

The root of the problem is the police force. Even if people are acting in a
aggressive, rebellious way against police, they are doing so because of
decades of improper use of police force. If we want to change the situation,
people must feel safe around police. It’s not just “were police legally
right,” it’s “do people feel safe in their own communities.” Clearly not, and
we must make changes to help people feel safe. To aid with that, police should
be much less powerful, since abuse stems from power.

We should all get behind these changes because police brutality is dangerous
to everyone, and especially dangerous to minority communities.

