This is a declaration of how un-civilized and rotten USA is. If a countryfolk needs to create tooling to safeguard themselves from the country's force whose sole purpose is to protect the countryfolk, then that country is dead already.
Nationalistic flamewar is one of several forms of flamewar tied for the #1 spot of what we don't need here.
No, but the people in charge then created the Jim Crow laws, which extended beyond the slavery states.
> end Jim crow
But not its continued influence – not yet. Meanwhile, it's having a resurgence; white supremacist violence is the biggest form of domestic terrorism, and even the President was revoking anti-discrimination legislation as of last week (not in the sensible way that would've had benefits elsewhere, but in the impulsive "I don't like this" way).
> win the right to vote.
Which isn't afforded to criminals – good thing all the illegal things are bad. Apart from numbers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_number Oh, and apparently disenfranchisement of "legitimate" citizens is also increasing. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/nov/07/is-america-a...
If a macro is one of the most powerful weapons in the fight against police brutality, then something is seriously wrong. No, defeatists don't tend to solve problems, but no unacknowledged problem was ever solved.
If you want to solve a problem, start by confronting its extent.
At least in the USA we have the right to document these interactions with video footage.
Least desirable person, indeed - and that person was chosen by the people. It’s what facepalms were invented for.
If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and sticking to the rules when posting here, we'd be grateful.
Would a federal level watchdog help? Would it even be possible?
Downvote reasons? Happy to edit the question if it's offensive, dumb, or whatever.
The police in other countries can take a much more relaxed attitude toward their interactions with the public because there's almost no chance of the person shooting them.
They could be, but are very unlikely to be. Despite the huge number of privately guns owned in America, the vast majority of cops will never be shot at nor have valid reason to shoot at somebody. Cops who constantly fear for their lives are operating under a warped view of reality.
I think it's a culture problem for cops. They hang out on cop forums, cop chat rooms or facebook groups; they read cop newsletters and generally socialize with other cops. These groups have the effect of amplifying stories about violence against cops, because those stories are sensational and of obvious interest to cops, and that amplification in turn gives rise to a warped perspective on how risky their job actually is.
2. Only the police should have guns.
Choose one.
The "only the police" almost makes it sound like that is what is being discussed around gun control laws.
The cops in the US are definitely more jumpy than I'm comfortable with - their natural reaction to a car door closing and someone (or is it just me, I look like a rake with an afro) stepping towards them is to touch their gun, because they treat every person as possibly armed & dangerous.
And it's not like I was in a high crime area either, all I needed was to know my way to SJC having missed 85.
I'm not "victim blaming" Kenneth Walker or Brianna Taylor here. Its absolutely the cops fault for messing up the no-knock warrant. But in a country with 2nd amendment, cops have the difficult job of entering homes vs armed neutral parties.
In the UK, cops can go in with nothing but a baton and be fine, because the UK citizenry don't have as many guns as US citizens do.
--------
There's a huge and fundamental difference between UK cops and US cops if only because of the 2nd Amendment issue. Each encounter with the citizenry, even if they are neutral, can end up deadly due to our huge proliferation of guns.
That stress in of itself could be making our cops more trigger happy, because US Cops enter life-or-death situations in higher frequency than other countries.
You're arguing that people should be deprived of the ability to defend themselves so that the police don't have to worry about the repercussions of trampling on their civil rights, and that somehow this will result in less trampling.
Ban no-knock raids (which have dubious legality anyway) and situations like this wouldn't happen. Better yet, end the war on drugs altogether. Kenneth Walker keeps his right to self-defense, Breonna Taylor lives, no officer gets shot, the constitution remains unviolated, and nobody goes to jail for victimless crimes. Everybody wins. It is astounding to me that people argue "disarm Kenneth Walker so the police can fuck up his (wrong) house stress-free" is a better solution than that.
A more recent and more famous example is the rapper Tupac who witnessed police beating up a guy for no reason. Tupac grabbed a gun and told them to stop, and when the police shot at him, he shot back wounding one, and wasn't found to have committed any crime. Randy Weaver shot and killed a federal agent and was exonerated at trial.
These are just examples from memory. I'm sure if you looked you'd find many more. It may not be wise to shoot out with the police, and you'd better be certain you're right, but you're absolutely permitted to use your guns on the police and kill them in some circumstances.
https://newsmaven.io/pinacnews/eye-on-government/texas-man-f...
Also, Indiana for example explicitly legalizes home defense against "public servants"[1].
[1] https://codes.findlaw.com/in/title-35-criminal-law-and-proce...
Or it shows how hysterical people are in a country with the most advanced democracy, civil rights and justice system in the world.
Those who disagree, tell me: the ratio of incarcerated males to females is something like 9:1. Similarly a far greater number of men die at the hands of police than women. Is the justice system biased against men?
And if we extend this myopic logic, is there a huge problem of racism in the black community? Because black on white crime (including violent crime) is something like 10x the rate of white on black crime. Is there a systemic problem with racism in the black community?
The entire country has gone insane.
Edit: if there's something wrong with my reasoning, please feel free to point it out. Silent downvotes only reinforce the stigma, yes, stigma that is now associated with the same rational inquiry that I'm paid to perform each day as a research scientist.
Edit 2: I can't find a source for the 370MM number and I suspect it was generous with the definition of interaction...here's another source that gives just shy of 70MM - still high enough that what's going on is blowing things way out of proportion. http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/pbtss11.pdf
https://www.cdc.gov/healthequity/lcod/men/2017/all-races-ori...
One of these days the cops could sit on your neck or your child's neck until you pass out and die. Do you want to live in a society where that's tolerated, or can you agree that it's unacceptable for the police to murder people who are being arrested?
Who is arguing this? Anywhere? Why are people being treated as though they're trying to excuse murder? That's dehumanizing.
>One of these days the cops could sit on your neck or your child's neck until you pass out and die
This may seem like a trivial dismissal, but one of us has a different approach to parenting, and I suspect it is shared by approximately 50% of the voting population. I would teach my children to cooperate with police under the circumstances in the Floyd video. I would also teach them not to do drugs in public.
No, this is not victim blaming, and I do believe that the force in this case was excessive and unnecessary. But I also advocate for teaching people to function in a society where their actions affect others and can create dangerous situations unnecessarily.
Why do you think anyone wants to live in such a society and why do you falsely imply it is tolerated in the USA? The responsible officers for the death of Floyd are already charged - and let's not disingenuously assume a known, violent repeat offender who is obviously on drugs is treated the same as me or you or one of our children.
And this is totally baffling for someone outside the US where crime rates are lower, people are almost never armed and civil liberties aren't so great. The police seem to be doing an amazing job in the USA overall and rare occurrences are being blown way out of proportion.
By way of a case study, may I refer you to Robert Jones: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-5ad914e1-afed-4e0d-...
Worst of all, USA tries to render itself as a global heaven and better than every other country but still.
I left a country (Turkey) that's considered 3rd world by the rest of the West for Ireland a few years ago. But I wouldn't even consider exchange Turkey with USA.
That's how USA is seen from outside (at least by my perspective)