Genuine unprovoked and unnecessary police brutality incidents are incredibly rare (relative to all police interactions) and hardly an epidemic. When someone is breaking the law and resisting arrest the police have no choice but to be violent with the resistor. Unfortunately these incidents often get categorized as "police brutality" when they're really just a necessary use of force.
More broadly, the entire narrative of police brutality and killings of minorities is basically nonsense. When controlling for violent encounters with police and crimes committed, blacks (armed and unarmed) are actually less likely to be killed by police than whites.
Sites like this and an irresponsible media simply exaggerate the issue and needlessly inflame tensions without providing proper and necessary context.
That video is a 5 second long anecdote. Regardless, the woman was probably told to move and was refusing. When you disobey riot police in a riot situation that's what happens and I absolutely side with the police.
Data literally supports what I'm saying. A distorting narrative is what's driving all the recent calls to action and solidarity. People are being lied to and misled, either that or they are just using the narrative to push their own agendas.
The outrage started not because of the video that was undisputable evidence of police violence, it started because the police did not immediately arrest the officers who committed and helped with the murder of a person.
Had Minneapolis have to burn to the ground, so that they finally arrest the murderer policeman?
How is the reaction of the people relevant to our topic? Are you suggesting that the police is acting differently when they suspect that there will be an outrage, and differently when nobody is watching them?
I'm not sure if you're trolling or just very misinformed, but the position he was held in violates every single rule of police training on restraining individuals.
The issue is not the rarity of police brutality (although I disagree) it is the acceptance and silence of the perpetrators fellow officers who witness it. It means that all of these officers who don't intervene are guilty of dereliction of duty and condone the violence. These people should not have power of citizens. It means the entire system is corrupt and broken.
"When controlling for violent encounters with police and crimes committed, blacks (armed and unarmed) are actually less likely to be killed by police than whites." Legitimate Source required?
This study seems to indicate black men are killed by the police at a rate of 2.5x that of white men.
Your argument essentially boils down to sure cops brutally kill people and get away with it but its really the media that is at fault for bringing this to the surface. If we just let the cops do what they want everything would be calm and those uppity minorities would know their place.
"Sites like this and an irresponsible media simply exaggerate the issue and needlessly inflame tensions without providing proper and necessary context."
Just so I can understand can you please explain the context missing from the video depicting the murder of George Floyd, the source of these nationwide protests. Also please explain why his fellow officers stood around watching and what would have happened if the media had not elevated this incident. Please use small words as I am just some guy that thinks that even a single case of cops getting away with murder is far too many.
hmmm, interesting. When were you able to speak with Derek Chauvin the officer that killed Floyd to confirm that it was not racially motivated? Or are you just assuming and making things up?
"A white man was killed in almost exactly the same way as George recently but there were no protests, because the man was white. People have the unjustified belief that blacks are disproportionately targeted so that's why there were protests." So your argument is that police are killing everyone and we should all protest? I agree. If that's not your point then it should be. Accepting that police are able to violently kill people is not a great position to have.
I actually am trending towards the view that once a social network reaches a certain size, all users must register their real identities with the network owner to maintain their accounts.
This information would not need to be stored, it would just be needed to verify an account as belonging to a real person.
Except it wasn't glorifying violence. Like at all. He was not saying that if looting continues then police would start shooting, that's a twisted and strained interpretation.
He was stating simply that looting begets violence, meaning that the looting must be stopped before things become more violent. It is a call to action to those who appear content to let the looting run rampant as if it's somehow OK or justified.
In such an escalation both protestors and counter protestors would be shooting, so bringing the situation under control quickly is in the best interest of the protestors and the community as a whole.
It is a clear example of the dangers of allowing Twitter to moderate when such an egregiously bad interpretation of Trump's tweet triggers moderation.
That's simply a recognition that looting begets violence, meaning that the looting must be stopped before things become more violent, and a call to action to those who appear content to let the looting run rampant as if it's somehow OK or justified.
In such an escalation both protestors and counter protestors would be shooting, so bringing the situation under control quickly is in the best interest of the protestors and the community as a whole.
While it may be tempting to jump to a racial interpretation of the arrest, it appears that the CNN reporters were just standing in the wrong place and in the chaos of the moment were arrested.
What chaos? The scene shown in the video looks really calm, with one protester, several reporters, and a very large number of police standing around apparently doing nothing more than looking intimidating at that moment.
You have just scolded the above commenter for jumping to a racial interpretation, and then jumped to an opposite conclusion yourself, on the basis of no evidence.
I hope that anyone seeing this situation and thinking, “I’m not sure how race plays into this,” will go back and learn some more about the history of race in America. I think a good starting place is the podcast “1619” which does a really good job investigating where racial problems in America came from.
Perhaps it’s naïve of me to think people will want to learn about what it really means to be Black in America. But I think if you really listen to what history is saying and really listen to what Black people are experiencing right now it will change how you think about events like this.
When a group of white people and a group with a black person are doing the exact same thing (reporting for cable news), positioned equidistant on opposite sides of a group of police offers and one group gets arrested and the other does not, how is that not racism? It is literally a natural experiment with a single variable (race) changed.
You're assuming that a single variable is being changed, but the far more likely explanation is that, given the high complexity of the situation, there are some other variables that you're not accounting for.
What is far more disturbing than a reporter ignoring police orders and facing the repercussions is that a city is burning from mindless violence, this violence encouraged by a media and other prominent figures that relish in stoking racial tensions by selective reporting and misrepresentation of facts.
Staying focused on the actual details of the tweet that spurred this order, Twitter's response highlights the problems inherent with content moderation.
There are hundreds of documented cases of people being convicted of mail in ballot voter fraud. In Paterson NJ there was an all mail election recently that is causing significant problems. I shudder at the thought of that playing out on a national scale.
Yet in spite of those facts, Twitter feels that Trump's warnings are somehow wrong. In light of the facts I think his fear is justified.
Twitter is a private company but we restrict the activities of private companies all the time. I see no reason why we shouldn't have a serious conversation about placing special restrictions on internet platforms' ability to censor users.
Because many of us come from the US and Germany and are what many consider the "good guys". Even if we don't come from the US or Germany our political and economic systems are more aligned with those countries than some other countries.
To flip this on its head, would you argue that the people working to secure the Nazi's torture camp computers were being the good guys? Did they have any ethical obligations to make it easier for Ally powers to decipher the records after the war was won (or even before) to help people reunite with their families?
More broadly, the entire narrative of police brutality and killings of minorities is basically nonsense. When controlling for violent encounters with police and crimes committed, blacks (armed and unarmed) are actually less likely to be killed by police than whites.
Sites like this and an irresponsible media simply exaggerate the issue and needlessly inflame tensions without providing proper and necessary context.