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Comment by djsumdog | Hacker News Reader

> A video of five or 10 or 30 seconds does not tell the whole story, of course. It does not depict what happened before the camera started rolling. It is unclear from the videos, for instance, what the officers’ intentions were or why protesters were being arrested or told to move.

It's right there in the article, after you scroll past all the videos. Many of these videos are totally missing their context. Here in Chicago, I saw police force a woman to the concrete as she was screaming ... after she threw something into a police cruiser that set it on fire.

Why did we see so much more violence from these protests than we've ever seen before? Part of it is COVID and the anxiety from being bottle up and out of work, but part of it is also the normalization of the masks:

https://battlepenguin.com/politics/secondary-effects/#masks-...

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The article you linked is littered with misinformation. I would not recommend that anyone read it.

It asserts "facts", like the false statement that wearing a mask lowers blood oxygen concentration by 20%, using citations of Facebook videos and conspiracy theory "news" websites as sources.

I don't know about 20%, but here's an earlier non-partisan research on medical staff wearing masks:

http://scielo.isciii.es/pdf/neuro/v19n2/3.pdf

Some rebuttals on the current concerns I've seen are just some doctors on their own doing a self-test (under god knows what standards and not peer reviewed).

Your post is missing context as well. Was anyone injured when the cruiser was set on fire? Was the woman armed? Was she literally any sort of physical threat to the officer or officers who threw her to the ground?

Maybe I’m some sort of fascist, but I have zero problems with an officer using force to arrest someone who firebombed a police car, regardless of anyone was injured or she was an immediate threat after.

I’ve seen so many examples of excessive and unwarranted force from the US police, by now hundreds of incidents.

I'm not excusing excessive force, I'm saying fire bombing in general is a felony and police should be able to arrest a suspect and use force if they don't comply (obviously reasonable force).

There is no evidence in the comment about this incident that indicates the suspect resisted in any way. This is what I meant about "missing context."

You may be some sort of fascist if you believe police disproportionately escalating violence is acceptable, but maybe not. At the very least, you're confused, IMO.

Disproportionately escalating violence? I'm not saying the cop should get a few punches in, but detaining and arresting a suspect is not "escalating violence".

Since you seem to a stickler for "proportional violence", would you be ok if the cop just located the suspects car and firebombed it? I mean, that's proportional, no?

You are clearly trolling and I'll not reply until you reformulate your question.

If somebody incurs damage to government property without, as even you admit, any injury or immediate threat, and a government agent responds by using violence against that person, then yes, that is fascism. What perspective are you coming from that would define it any other way? You're practically admitting to using emotion to justify violence.

Edit: Not to mention this is perhaps moot to the broader argument, as this behavior from the police only requires very few repeating instances to be extremely destructive to society, and cherry-picking cases where the victim arguably "deserved" it has no effect on the impact of the other cases.

> If somebody incurs damage to government property

There has been so much argument on the lines of "It's just property."

I guess "They're just laws," as if they don't mean anything; as if laws were not the way we evolved socially to protect individuals from other individuals who wanted to cause harm.

She set a car on fire! That is literally violence. It's literally destruction. Saying "oh, it's a thing and not a person" doesn't hold a candle stick to the fact that it is still literally violence!

Words are literally not violence. Speech is literally not violence. Silence is literally not violence.

Setting things on fire, that you don't own, destructively, is violence. I can't believe 2020 is the year in which we have no idea what terms like "violence" and "non-violence" have literally meant for decades if not centuries.

Orwell had a term for this. It was called Double-Think.

You are confused. A car doesn't feel pain. Unnecessary violence against humans is worse than unnecessary violence against property.

That logic makes no sense.

So if a group decided to plan explosives and demolish a empty government building, you'd be like "come on, buildings have no feelings, leave them be"?

You are trolling and putting words in my mouth. I'll not reply to this until you reframe your question.

It's not trolling, because that's EXACTLY what the Earth Liberation Front (ELF) did. They destroyed countless empty buildings. Is eco-terrorism justified if no one dies? What about all the people who loose their jobs? What about all the people that could have died?

>She set a car on fire! That is literally violence.

I'm referring to violence against people, not objects.

>Words are literally not violence. Speech is literally not violence. Silence is literally not violence.

I never said any of this, nor do I generally agree with any of it.

>Orwell had a term for this. It was called Double-Think.

I think these kinds of extreme us-vs-them strawmen are far more damaging, cruel, and thoughtless than the bad usages of the "it's just property" argument you're referring to are.

And to be clear, my entire post was in reference to the specific claim that destroying a police cruiser is automatically grounds for using violence against a person - for all I know about the example in question, her behavior on whole may have warranted the level of violence she received, but it's a ridiculous and anti-human opinion to default to.

> Was anyone injured when the cruiser was set on fire

I don't know, but if I was a police officer on the scene my first instinct wouldn't be a thorough inspection of the car to see if anyone was in there, it would be to make sure that woman doesn't do it again. I don't want to risk another firebomb.

> Was the woman armed

Was the firebomb not enough? Clearly she was armed with that. She may have more. Again, if I'm the police officer on the scene I don't know this and I don't want to take any risks. Secure the assailant first, sort things out later.

> Was she literally any sort of physical threat to the officer or officers who threw her to the ground? Yes. The threat of serious bodily injury from burns. In that moment there is no way of telling what else may be up this person's sleeve. She has already shown that she indents to cause serious damage with little regard for potential collateral damage.

So I too may be a super facist, but I'm totally OK with urgently and immediately taking the woman down.

> I'm totally OK with urgently and immediately taking the woman down

I agree, though I would never make such subjective judgments as to the difference between necessary and unnecessary force without seeing a video.

>I too may be a super facist

This preemptive underdogging attack on people who disagree with you disguised as a self-defense is a huge red flag that you don't have personal conviction behind what you're saying.

I'm very glad you are not a police officer. I want people checking cars to see if anyone was hurt before they go slamming people to the ground. I don't want people unnecessarily attacking others who are no physical threat. There was no "assailant" here, because nobody was "assailed!"

Your way of thinking is what's given us roving, armed bands of state-sanctioned thugs who close ranks when confronted with wrongdoing, rather than public servants who are there to serve and protect.

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