Police Riot | Hacker News Reader

Police Riot

en.wikipedia.org

112 pointsashtonkem26 comments

Ok, between this one and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23395852, wikipedia submissions to HN have jumped the shark and we need to go back to penalizing them on HN. Generic repetition of the hottest topics is the opposite of what makes a good HN submission.

Other recent posts about Wikipedia on HN:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23249978

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23117614

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23239405

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22990237

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23089041

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23274898

I often click through to read posted Wikipedia articles, but I really wish the OP would also comment why they're posting a particular article and what their thoughts are on the subject. Basically, what makes this interesting?

I believe what we’re seeing in some cities constitutes a police riot, with cops instigating or creating violent clashes out of peaceful protests.

I think that's perfectly good logic. It's just that the general theme has already had major discussion on HN, including on the front page when you posted this. The distinction between "police brutality" and "police riot" is without a difference; the internet does not do subtlety.

I think this is a great idea.

Totally fair. I’ve actually held that opinion for a long time, since wiki articles tend to be random and deliver no value. This one just seemed too on the nose, and I couldn’t help myself.

Dang, if I could just say, while I've also noticed an increase in Wikipedia submissions lately I've found a lot of them to be particularly interesting! Some that come to mind were https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23379148 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23358989

It seems to me this was just a bad submission, it's not so much Wikipedia.

Penalized sites still get onto HN's front page, so all is not lost. It's just a question of degree. People were overdoing it with the generic Wikipedia submissions for sure.

The 1992 police riot in New York associated with resistance to community review boards and Giuliani's mayoral ambitions[1] should probably be on that list.

[1] https://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/rudys-racist-ra...

The issue is, when its the police who determine whether someone is acting correctly, it's trivial for them to do this, as they can just rule that they were right and the protesters were wrong. The video from the Seattle protest yesterday was a great example of this. Fuck the police.

What video is that? What took place?

https://www.reddit.com/r/Seattle/comments/gv0ru3/this_is_the...

Thanks for sharing! This is insane.

The psychology for police brutality lately seems to be pretty simple.

1.) Accuse someone of acting inappropriately, and use "corrective force". If that action is real or not, is irrelevant.

2.) Should your victim react negatively then accuse the victim of resisting. Once the accusation is made, more than likely everyone begins to believe this narrative as the truth.

3.) Once the victim and other bystanders begin to react negatively treat them as hostile targets. These hostile civilians are now rioters.

4.) You have justification to violently shut down the riot. Now that protestors are acting with hostility they are no longer peacefully protesting. They are now rioting.

5.) Ruthlessly use force to ensure that all rioters are apprehended and shut down without question.

6.) Congratulate yourselves for shutting down a riot.

June Fourth Incident : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_Tiananmen_Square_protests

Date: April 15 – June 4, 1989 (1 month, 2 weeks and 6 days) Location: 400 cities nationwide

Link redirects to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_Tiananmen_Square_protests

> Please submit the canonical URL. Avoid link shorteners.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Supplying an alternate link to circumvent a paywall or network routing issue is well within the rules of HN. You’re being pedantic. Who was harmed by the URL specifically? It was clearly and unambiguously labeled.

We're not the rioters you're the rioters!

It's certainly true that police instigate some of these riots, but how do you explain arson?

Without listing the numerous acts of arson that have occurred, I think we could agree that it's farfetched to say that police have instigated those acts of arson. Even if they did, it would still not be correct to exact the revenge against the completely uninvolved property owners.

There are bad police and there are bad protestors, good and evil are not evenly distributed across the two opposing sides. You might say the bad guys aren't really protestors, they're rioters. I'd also say that the bad cops aren't really cops, they're criminals.

Please maintain an unbiased and neutral attitude when you think about the police. Not all of them are bad. It's really unfortunate that enough of them are that things like this happen.

With that said the escalation of this conflict is almost 100% the fault of Trump.

Wait was the escalation when rioters started looting and burning stuff? or was it when they shot cops and bystanders? or maybe it was when they started having pallets of bricks deployed to protest areas? Nah, it was when trump sent in the national guard that governors requested.

Trump sending in the national guard was not what escalated this. What escalated this was his usual politicizing of every event. By popping off on twitter with his now famous "when you start looting, we start shooting" tweet.

The national guard could have been sent in without Trump, the governor of each state is in charge of the national guard of that state.

Trump is just trying to take credit for what governors could and would have done unilaterally.

(Oh hey, remember coronavirus? Same thing. Everything that happened was up to governors, his contribution was a net negative. Well, maybe not everything. There is what Mike Pence did, remember, he was "in charge" of everything!)

Much like he's trying to politicize the response by putting GEN Milley "in charge"

The Pentagon's official response was (paraphrasing) "GEN Milley's responsibilities have not changed; he will continue to advise the Sec Def and President"

EDIT:

I should also add, that he tricked GEN Milley into walking into a photo op in front of St. John's church.

The military tries very hard to remain apolitical, and he duped the man into being part of a prop piece.

Miley’s excuse doesn’t hold water. Is he in the habit of wearing BDUs every single day? He commands no troops, a suit or dress uniform is what he would wear at his job. Why change into BDUs if not for a photo op?

I think he’s using a flimsy excuse to walk it back once he got serious public and private blowback over what he was doing.

Everyone in the Army wears that uniform every single day, even to work in an office. That is what he wears to work daily.

Also as the chief of staff he is actually in command of the entire Army.

It's kind of stupid, until you consider that the alternative is wearing a much more annoying dress uniform.

100% he was tricked into it, there's enough out there in the news to figure it out.

The deputy sec def just resigned because Mark Esper wouldn't push back. BTW remember what happened to the last Sec Def, Mattis? Resigned because Trump wouldn't listen to him.

If you haven't noticed yet, Trump surrounds himself with yes men. If they don't go along with it, they are fired.

Staff officers do not wear BDUs every day. He has an office job, not a combat role. Look at any non-emergency meeting of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; you’ll see a lot of dress uniforms, not a lot of BDUs

As the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff he is prohibited by law from exercising any authority over troops. His only responsibility is advising the president, and working with the Secretary of Defense, who does actually command troops.

From Trump's tweets:

"Any difficulty and we will assume control but, when the looting starts, the shooting starts."

"Looting leads to shooting, and that’s why a man was shot and killed in Minneapolis on Wednesday night - or look at what just happened in Louisville with 7 people shot. I don’t want this to happen, and that’s what the expression put out last night means..."

Perhaps it would be useful to keep an unbiased and neutral attitude when thinking about Trump? Sure, I can see how you think it is a direct threat by Trump. That is how I initially took it as well. But it also the very natural reaction by the residents/business owners to protect themselves and their property. To me, it is entirely plausible and likely he was referring to locals fighting back against the rioters and looters.

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