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Comment by Meekro | Hacker News Reader

In the past, I didn't buy into the Black Lives Matter message because I didn't like their poster child, Michael Brown.

But recently I've become convinced that BLM was right, and the thing that changed my mind was the story of Daniel Shaver. Google it and watch the video if you haven't seen it yet -- it might change your mind, too.

He wasn't armed, hadn't committed a crime earlier that day, didn't disrespect the officers, complied with police orders, and had the same skin color as the policeman who shot him. And they executed him anyway.

A jury then acquitted his killer of all charges.

I don't know what to think anymore.

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You severely need to check your bias if, after years of extremely similar incidences, it took a white death instead of a black death to convince you.

It's sobering for sure to realize those biases exist. I am a white man, who was extremely skeptical of the first few police shooting stories, starting with Trayvon Martin, then Michael Brown et al.

Trayvon was killed during a time when I was extremely politically conservative, but later that year I actively participated in a Republican campaign in Florida. That moment is when I really started to criticize my own political and religious beliefs.

Since then, mostly thanks to moving away from my parents and heading to university, I've continued to drift away from my old viewpoints. I can't say I am 100% onboard with every position BLM has advocated but the same story told year after year has started to change my mind.

And this case has a shock factor for a white man that the others did not. I'm ashamed to admit that. It's an uncomfortable way to be woken up to one's own biases. I hope it's not too late to help change things for both black and white Americans. And I hope it's not too late to fix my own thinking.

It's not just shootings, it's also utterly horrible incidents like the killing of Keith Vidal [0], civil forfeiture [1] and the generally increasing militarization of US police, not just in equipment but also tactics [2], like running off-the-book black sites [3].

I'm not even from the US, but these worrisome trends have been obvious for quite a while now, in many different ways. Like the mere existence of crowdsourced maps of police killing family pets [4] and something like "swatting people" actually being a thing, which is reserved in its severity pretty much to the US [5].

Note: I'm not trying to paint a super bleak picture of "all US police are evil", I just think there's a very real problem there. A problem that seems to be mostly driven by a culture of "War", like on drugs and on terror.

[0] http://edition.cnn.com/2014/01/07/justice/north-carolina-tee...

[1] https://priceonomics.com/how-police-officers-seize-cash-from...

[2] https://www.aclu.org/issues/criminal-law-reform/reforming-po...

[3] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/oct/19/homan-square...

[4] https://puppycidedb.com/

[5] http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/robert-mcdaid...

There are lots of problems. The black sites in particular have been weighing on my conscience a lot recently. I do find the combination of racism and police brutality particularly vile though. Especially given the for-profit prison subsystem and the exemption given to slavery in the amendment which supposedly abolished it.

The police is just a part of the problem. The real problem here is the jury who let the cop walk. This is the real issue: no accountability for bad police behavior including unnecessary shootings, civil forfeiture, black ops sites, etc. Our political system is designed around balance of power. What we observe now is that the executive branch (including police) got too much power and the other branches of the government have to take it back.

That whole situation was a mess. A scared cop with an assault rifle, an intoxicated suspect. Instructions that are a mess, a victim that can't comply with the instructions because of intoxication. Then the victim reaches for the right pocket while crawling on the floor, despite the warnings that the hands need to be up, visible, or on the floor. Scared cop fires.

I wouldn't really say that there's institutionalized conspiracy against blacks and that everyone is shooting them for no reason. There are obvious instances that individual police officers acted cruel but I wouldn't pin those instances as proof of a system wide corruption and conspiracy against blacks.

BLM is definitely not right.

Have you seen the video? It's clear beyond any doubt that the officer wasn't "scared", but a sadistic control freak. He had "You're Fucked" engraved into his rifle for God's sake, the guy is obviously far too immature or full of himself to be pointing a gun at anyone.

I agree. But people have been fighting police brutality for years and years. That's not BLM's focus, or they'd be called Stop Police Brutality or something.

Think of it as a reflection of the statistics involved rather than an absolute.

That brutality disproportionately affects African Americans. Police brutality and racism are both huge problems, combined they are worse than the sum of said parts.

So, my characterization of the cop might seem like I'm victimizing him. I'm not.

Your characterization of the cop just proves my point. It is not the system wide conspiracy to kill, it's that people who want to kill and are sadistic control freaks love being cops?

So these are all particular instances and not an indication of system wide statistically significant killing spree.

All right, we probably agree on more than I originally thought. But the fact is those sadistic control freaks, as if it weren't bad enough they were cops, are often biased against minorites and exist in a system that is biased. So I wouldn't say there's a conspiracy, but I do argue that the system disproportionately affects non-white Americans. And perpetuates itself with all its biases.

I would not say that the system disproportionately affects non-white Americans. I would also not say that the system is biased, there's not a law, a rule, nothing, creating a bias in the system.

I would also say that bias of the individual is not on a scale to have a statistically significant bias happening within the police.

non-white Americans commit more violent crimes, that's a fact. I would not blame the police for that fact. There's something cultural going on there and I would not even say that is a product of racist culture. IMO, USA is the least racist it has ever been.

Did you even RTFA? Facts are much more relevant than your opinion. I put zero stock in what "you would say" versus the data shown here, which you conveniently ignore.

Why are you even posting on this topic with so little knowledge of it?

I read the article. When I was making "would say" statements I was merely copying the expression parent used.

Facts are that black people commit more crimes. These are not fake crimes, these are real crimes. This obviously makes it very probable that they'll have issues with the cops, including shootings.

It's very simple, groups that commit more crimes, do get shot more often than others by cops.

Yes, there are instances of obvious cop racism and bad judgement but these are instances, not an epidemic.

I've seen the video and I severely disagree. I'm not trying to say what happened is right but the victim of the shooting was reaching, from the point of the officer, possibly reaching for a gun at this point and especially in the given situation I would suggest that someone who likes "You're fucked" on the gun will still be stressed and pumped on adrenaline, hence the confusing and bad instructions. So they see someone reaching for what might be a gun and fire.

Was it avoidable? Definitely. It's a tragedy and not necessary.

In most other civilized countries the police would have handled this much more maturely and with better training.

I'm a private citizen. In most states if I'm in a confrontation with someone I'll need more of a credible threat than a man on the ground touching his hip to shoot him. Why should a police officer be held to a lower standard?

I'm not suggesting that police officers are held to lower standards, quite the opposite. But please recognize that this wasn't some everyday situation in which someone touched their hip, rather, the police was under the believe someone in the building was armed and dangerous, which is quite a different situation.

If the standard isn't lower, where is the evidence for the officer's claim that he was 100% certain the victim was armed? The bodycam footage certainly doesn't seem to back up that kind of claim...

It's so weird. In france if somebody reach for his pocket most people would never think 'gun'.

The US appear in a scary light when I read that.

As someone living in germany, I agree. Police in the USA seems to be undertrained, underpaid and aggressive beyond reasonable.

As I've mentioned in the past, I feel lucky I don't have to live in the US, it seems to be a terrible place to be.

Before this case I would have told you that as long as you were like me (white, male, relatively well-off) it's a fine place. This year I'm not so certain.

Police in the USA seems to be undertrained

The problem isn't lack of training, it's the way they're being trained.

To a certain degree it's because of the gun culture in the US. But I support gun rights, enjoy sport shooting, and also would not immediately think "gun". My hypothesis is that police work in the States tends to attract the kind of people who want to be macho and point guns at people but lack the cajones to join the military and actually have those people want to kill them back. This obviously doesn't describe all or even most officers, but I've met enough kids like that in my high school years who dreamed of heading to the police academy that I believe it's significant.

I enjoy going to the shooting range myself. But here if you want to have the right to hold something else than a 9mm in a secured and monitored location you have to work a lot for it, and prove you are not going to go booling for columbine.

A country where sometimes kids can have a hold on an automatic doesn't feel right to me.

> A country where sometimes kids can have a hold on an automatic

Citation needed? That isn't a likely situation outside a carefully monitored range with waivers, etc. signed.

https://qz.com/37015/how-school-killings-in-the-us-stack-up-...

They don't. Automatic weapons are pricey, heavily controlled and not something people are likely to pick up at a retail store or even a gun show.

Important detail though: It wasn't the cop who is heard talking in the video who shot him.

Thanks for adding that, recently read that.

BLM is still a harmful distraction because not that many lives are being lost by wrongful police shootings. It would be more beneficial to focus on areas like Chicago where hundreds die every year (overwhelmingly young black men killed by young black men).

Assuming you're not dogwhistling: My impact on the inner city black youth of Chicago is limited since I am a middle class average white dude. I feel that my time is better spent addressing the police problem since it still is a problem.

I'm not criticizing how you spend your time. I'm criticizing BLM for directing our focus onto what is a tiny sliver in the pie chart of how black people die.

If they want to fight police brutality, great, but then why are they called BLM? If they want to save the lives of black people, they're doing a disservice by acting as if police brutality is the area to focus on.

They are free to advocate for what they think is important and you are free to ignore them. Criticizing their area of focus helps no one.

> Criticizing their area of focus helps no one

No, I think it can be helpful to criticize if people are being misled into picking up pennies when twenties, fifties, and hundreds are falling out of their pockets.

I'm sure the black community will be immensely grateful to you for alerting them to the problems in inner cities. In fact, you can have all the gratitude for "alerting" them to their "lost twenties". I'll stick to my guns.

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