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Comment by tomschlick | Hacker News Reader

As someone who carries on a regular basis, the #1 rule when dealing with the police is compliance.

Yes sir, no sir, the weapon is on my hip, my hands are on the steering wheel and you don't move unless told to do so. A cop is always on edge during a traffic stop but even more so after you tell them you have a weapon. Quick movements after you tell them you are armed is not going to end well.

Obviously we don't know the whole story here as the video starts after the shooting, but hopefully there is body cam footage to clear everything up.

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Oh, I think since cell phone cameras became ubiquitous we know enough stories to know the whole story, even if we haven't seen the exact details of this particular case yet.

I guess direct messages aren't available on HN. I just wanted to thank you for sharing your truth in this thread, it was relieving

> we know enough stories to know the whole story, even if we haven't seen the exact details of this particular case yet

So you're assuming something happened without any evidence? That is a horrible way to go about things.

We saw the same thing in the Micheal Brown case, people threw crazy stories out there about him being executed with his hands up and people rioted, looted, and burned the town down. Then a few months later we saw the actual evidence that proved he attacked that officer, ran away, and came back.

I'm not assuming anything. I know that despite whatever happened in this particular case (though it would seem rare to tell a cop you have a gun and then try to shoot him with it, and then be a cop freaking out, cursing and shaking over what you have just done, and by all accounts this guy was a super stand up guy, great school employee, no rap sheet, etc, etc, etc), that despite whatever happened in this particular case we have a problem with institutionalized violence against bodies of color in the United States, especially Black males. We have a structural problem with highly militarized police that believe they are fighting a war against the people they are paid to protect. We have a problem with holding those police accountable for their actions. The whole story is a long story, starting with slavery, continuing through redlining and segregation, etc but this whole story is a story about cops that kill more people in a day in this country than other industrialized countries have in a year. It's a story about unarmed Black men being killed at disproportionate rates even while white mass shooters are brought in alive and heavily armed. It's a whole story about a lot of things actually - a prison industrial complex grown bloated, a war on drugs that doesn't work, police training that is incomplete or wrong, complacent citizens, etc.

But again, I'm not passing judgement on whether this particular killing was "justified" or not. I'm just saying we already know the whole story, and the whole story is bigger than this particular tragic ending.

I'd agree with you that some police are too heavy handed for the everyday situation. However, there are a lot of violence / gang problems within the black communities in the US. That leads to cities and police forces cracking down on those violent areas which leads to even more heavy handedness and even more distrust by those communities. Its a perpetual cycle.

It seems that we need a revolution on both sides for anything meaningful to happen. Sadly we probably won't see that happen anytime soon.

Hopefully we can at least pass some meaningful reform related to drug imprisonment which would keep a lot of people out of jail for petty things, which just ends up feeding the cycle to begin with.

I can't fully address your comment as I don't have access to the relevant data (regarding black community violence and its correlation with "heavy handed" police).

What I will suggest is that overall violence does not seem to be correlated with the rate of police killings - see the third image in ref. 1.

[1] http://mappingpoliceviolence.org/2015

EDIT:

I can't reply to you due to the HN rate limit. Please see my response below:

I appreciate your response but I take issue with the data source behind that post (ref 1). I don't intend to take it apart fully, but it appeared to included factors (e.g., average commute time) that:

1. Systematically disfavor urban areas

2. Have little bearing to the question at hand, whether violence is correlated with police killings

Additionally, my claim above (2) is that violence and police killings, across the municipalities with the highest rates of police killings, are not correlated (ref. 3).

[1] http://places.findthehome.com/#guide

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12048043

[3] http://static1.squarespace.com/static/54ecf211e4b0ed744420c5...

Just via some quick googling, here are the most dangerous (violent) cities in the US. A lot of them match up to the top of the list you provided.

http://kdvr.com/2015/05/08/by-the-numbers-here-are-the-most-...

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