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Comment by jtms | Hacker News Reader

This probably won't be a popular opinion, but people would avoid 99% of this kind of thing if they would just respectfully comply with a police officer even if the officer is in the wrong. Fight your battles via the legal system later, not in the moment. Police get VERY nervous about non compliance and they are human beings just like everyone else with an extraordinarily dangerous job.

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Tell that to Daniel Shaver, who when shouted at by police to perform conflicting commands by multiple police while begging for his life, was executed in cold blood. I'm sorry, but that is a frighteningly naive stance to take and must come from a position of extreme privilege.

Cooperating might make it harder to fight your battles via the legal system. "Sure officer, come into my house/car and look around, gather or plant whatever evidence you feel is appropriate."

Even going down to the police station voluntarily for a "friendly" talk might screw you. In Salinas v. United States a man cooperated by going to the station. He answered some questions but was silent when officers asked if his shotgun would match shells from a crime scene. His silence was then used as evidence of his guilt and the Supreme Court decided that's OK.

You need to know your rights and explicitly assert your rights. The legal system is not going to do that work for you.

There's a difference between going out of your way to be compliant and complying with lawful orders and warrants.

> Please step out of the vehicle.

Comply and then ask if you're being detained.

> Can we come in and take a look around?

I'm sorry officer, no, I'm not comfortable with that unless you have a signed warrant stating the scope of your search.

> Want to come down for a chat?

I'm sorry officer, I don't feel comfortable speaking about this matter without consulting an attorney first.

Do you know what asserting your rights looks like to a cop having a bad day, especially if they're already anxious and you're a black man in a bad neighborhood? It looks an awful lot like "resisting", and it's going to be really hard to dispute that when they've shot you dead, claimed self-defense, and have their partners to back them up.

The problem here isn't someone failing to assert their rights; it's cops considering asserting your rights to be "contempt of cop" which can carry an immediate death sentence if you're the "wrong" type of person talking to the "wrong" type of cop.

>I'm sorry officer, no, I'm not comfortable with that unless you have a signed warrant stating the scope of your search.

>I'm sorry officer, I don't feel comfortable speaking about this matter without consulting an attorney first.

If you really want to piss them off remind them that this is probably what they advise their family members to do.

I don't see the threat of tasering in your imagined dialog.

Why are you being threatened with a taser in the first place? Real life isn't Training Day.

Sandra Bland was, in real life, threatened with a taser. In other real-life incidents, people who were cooperating have been shot, tasered or beaten. Real life isn't all Dragnet, either.

Yes she was. Because she refused to get out of her vehicle.

She was only asked to get out of the vehicle because she was self-admittedly "agitated" and began increasingly berating the officer in a way that was keeping him from finishing writing the citation.

So again, if an officer asks you to get out a vehicle, comply and ask if you're being detained. Don't grab your phone, don't tell the officer he doesn't have a reason to ask you to get out of the vehicle, after just admitting that you're agitated.

do you think the police officer's response to Ms. Bland's non-compliance in this case was reasonable? also, in your opinion, could he have de-escalated the situation before pointing a potentially lethal weapon at Ms. Bland's face? i'm really struggling trying to understand how you've arrived your thesis, which seems to be: just don't make cops mad and you (probably) won't die? that seems to me a poor standard for those entrusted with maintaining public safety. since the officer is the person with literally ALL of the power in this interaction and, ostensibly, is provided with extensive training on how to manage difficult interactions such as this, shouldn't he be held to a higher standard of accountability than Ms. Bland?

Fair enough with respect to Bland, but there are other cases, in which the dialog of cooperation did not end up the way it should have. In practice, merely asserting one's rights can be treated as if provocative.

People get VERY nervous about police with a track record of murdering unarmed people waving guns at them, and they are human beings just like everyone else looking down the barrel of a gun.

Maybe that opinion is unpopular because it puts more expectations on the victims of unjustified violence than the theoretically-trained perpetrators.

(In the following, I'll break out the numbers for black people separately from non-blacks or general population, since black people are killed by police at a higher rate, and those killings get a lot more attention)

We should of course be trying to reduce police killing, especially police killing of unarmed people, and seriously looking at the factor of two difference between the rates for blacks and non-blacks (factor of three for unarmed killings) to see if it is due to racism by police and fix that if it is.

But we probably also should not overstate the risk. Getting killed by police in the US is way down on the list of things that are likely to get you killed, even if you not white. An unarmed random person is about as likely to be killed by lighting as killed by police. An unarmed black person is 3 times as likely to be killed by police as killed by lighting, and 3 times as likely to be injured by lighting as killed by police.

Here are the numbers.

There are typically around 1000 police killings in the US per year, and about 200 of those are black people. The black population is around 37 million, out of a total of around 330 million. That gives a black killed by police rate of 0.54 per 100k, and a general population rate of 0.30 per 100k.

About 10% of the black people killed were unarmed, and about 5% for the killed population in general, bringing the unarmed killed rate to about 0.05 per 100k for blacks and 0.015 per 100k for the general population.

About 500 people are injured by lighting every year in the US, giving a lighting injury rate of 0.15 per 100k, and about 10% of those are killed, giving a killed by lighting rate of about 0.015 per 100k.

I am just being pragmatic. If she had just done what was asked instead of angrily protesting she would have gotten a traffic ticket which could have been fought in court and not have gone to jail and would still be alive

This is a reasonable belief, but incorrect. Philando Castile did everything he was asked to do, and was still murdered in front of his partner and child. There are many, many, many cases in which compliance gains nothing at all, and quite a few counter-cases in which protesting and waving a camera is likely (impossible to know for sure) the only reason people who are the subjects of police aggression are still alive.

Many people are not aware of these things off the top of their heads, but most black people--who are statistically six times more likely per capita to be killed by cops--definitely are aware.

You seem to have a naive idea of what 'fight it in court' means. When you enter the court system, especially as as a defendant, it is not as if you have been teleported into a domain where enlightened rationality rules, no matter what the constitutional theory says is supposed to happen.

Even if the law is nominally on the defendant's side, there is a good chance that she will be threatened with charges carrying significant penalties, possibly backed up by nothing more than the testimony of the officer who violated her rights in the first place, and offered a plea deal. Accepting the plea deal forecloses on any chance of righting a wrong.

you seem pretty confident in predicting that outcome - why?

Your opinion is unpopular because it is an ignorant opinion. American policing has its roots in "slave patrols" - it is an institution (like many American institutions) founded on anti-blackness. Americans are socialized to see Black people as inherently dangerous, and Black and brown people continue to be policed much more than white people.

Your comment is rightfully being downvoted because it reveals that you haven't even tried to research this topic. It is offensive because it continues to perpetuate attitudes that contribute to violence toward Black and brown people. It is also offensive because it is _so easy_ to educate yourself and contribute informed opinions instead of ignorant ones. One place to start is "The New Jim Crow" by Michelle Alexander. I really hope you take the time to read it and other books that explain what it's really like to be Black in America.

Close, but not quite. Police were created solely to protect the interests of landowners. They keep a decorum so that the wealthy can keep hold of their wealth. Landowners (in the US) were also commonly slaveholders, so I can see why you believe what you do.

Police forces existed long before Jim Crow laws, and their purposes were always centered around protecting the property of the wealthy.

There are tons of people who's job is to deal with the public in negative situations who manage to not go off the deep end like a lot of cops seem to do. Police should be held to an equal or higher standard, not lower.

Right, that's absolutely the ideal, but its not reality. Reality is that the safest thing to do is "yes sir, no sir" and comply and live - you only get one life

"Close your phone."

"Yes, sir."

"Close your phone."

"No, sir."

"I'll light you up." <Commences beating>

In the 1960s, a solution was for citizens to carry firearms for defense against the police, and it worked, at least a bit.

>In the 1960s, a solution was for citizens to carry firearms for defense against the police, and it worked, at least a bit.

Until of course they passed laws prohibiting that.

Get a separate recording device. Get multiple. One on your person and one in your vehicle.

Don't rely on your phone if you think you're at risk from corrupt policing.

While this is far better than carrying a gun, there is something seriously wrong wherever this is actually good practical advice for a portion of the population (you are not suggesting that these concerns are imaginary, are you?)

It is natural for centralized authority to go rotten if left unchecked. Certainly not imaginary.

If I had my way, all government bureaucrats would have a body cam glued to their chest, not just law enforcement. Humans are prone to bad behavior if they think they can get away with it.

And do carry a gun. And have a shotgun for home defense. And a long gun for when it's time to water the tree of liberty.

At what point, in the sort of situation we are discussing here, should one make use of one's gun?

Some people would say that the fact we're having this discussion means we should have used our guns a long time ago.

I don't personally think we're their yet because excessive police violence in my mind is simply a result of having a large amount of society that thinks you can pick and choose which human rights apply to whom and when and I think police violence will go away as that gets solved.

That's up to you. I'm just here to make sure you have firearms available for when you decide it's time to use them.

honest question: did you get partial tumescence when you typed "water[ing] the tree of liberty"?

again, why do you think simple compliance precludes the possibility of police violence? I can think of several examples literally off of the top of my head where this was not the case, many of which were already cited in the comments. So, why are you so sure that this would have been the outcome in this case?

>Police get VERY nervous about non compliance and they are human beings

They are paid and trained to get over this. If a police officer is THIS nervous at a traffic stop then he/she should not be on the force.

I got in a yelling match with a traffic cop once. I tend to agree that it is not a winnable situation. They hold all the cards. I'm white so I walked away alive, but with a handful of tickets. All of which were dismissed by the judge. Lesson learned, don't get in a pissing match with a cop. You might still lose, but escalating it yourself is a guaranteed loss.

You're right, that won't be a popular opinion.

I'm not wrong though

You are in fact wrong.

> Fight your battles via the legal system later

Ha.

So, if a cop orders you to suck his cock you should just go along with it? Or maybe we should expect police officers to meet some kind of standard. If we let cops act like Judge Dredd then that is what we will get.

That's the strawiest straw man ever in history and you know it. Yes, ideally cops would all be paragons of perfect virtue, but that is NOT REALITY and never has been and never will be so you have to do the pragmatic thing to stay safe

Educate yourself.

https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/19/us/police-sexual-assaults-mar...

"Police officers in the US were charged with more than 400 rapes over a 9-year period"

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