Hacker News Reader

Comment by wittyreference | Hacker News Reader

> powerful animal tranquilizer on a human being just to make some cops' job "easier"

You’re waxing hyperbolic. It’s a sedative drug used in normal human clinical practice, and in many settings is preferable because it has -fewer- risks of complications than other sedatives. And while I’m highly critical of it’s being used without strict medical protocol, I’ve worked psych ED enough to understand that there are occasionally absolutely, 100% ridiculously “agitated” patients that are going to have to be brought in, and will not do so without large amounts of physical force - something that is also prone to unfortunate complications.

View on HN

Elijah McClain was not “ridiculously agitated”.

The video shows that police escalated every chance they got.

After receiving a phone call of a “suspicious person” they went from in their car to hands on Elijah in less than 10s.

In a matter of minutes Elijah was on the ground surrounded by a dozen officers.

They’re saying “was he suspected of anything”, “why are we here”?

They don’t even know why they’re there... but they know that they need to indiscriminately dominate a young black man until he’s puking and crying and ultimately has a heart attack.

Ridiculously agitated, my foot. They (Police) create the situation, then they (Police) prescribe ketamine. These are not the people who should be making these calls. No one should be allowed to have this kind of latitude when dealing with another human.

> They don’t even know why they’re there... but they know that they need to indiscriminately dominate a young black man until he’s puking and crying and ultimately has a heart attack.

And this, for the benefit of folks here who still want to treat these incidents as individual aberrations, is what BLM is about.

Sure, police can be good or bad, sometimes make mistakes, etc... But POLICING, as it is practiced in this country, is a horrifying disaster. And at this point it seems almost completely beyond rescue. We need new cops, new practices, new laws, new equipment, new training. I don't see how you "reform" a culture like that.

> I don't see how you "reform" a culture like that.

You do it through hard work on real reform at the local level, something that BLM (the organization) isn't really interested in. I don't agree with everything but the ideas outlined here https://www.joincampaignzero.org are a good start. Some communities are in much worse situation than others and I think new leadership is urgently needed in many of these places (i.e., vote for change).

The rhetoric that you are using is supremely dangerous. Look what is going on in Portland as the police and local political leadership have withdrawn from the basic goal of public safety and ensuring a peaceful, civil community. It is devolving into warring tribes. It is actually astonishing to me that it hasn't escalated further than it has but I see that this weekend things have changed a bit as some new tribes arrived resulting in brawls/skirmishes/fighting between the tribes as opposed to with police.

To advocate or even suggest that policing, as a system, is irredeemably flawed and can't be reformed is to actively invite in chaos and civil unrest. Instead of a civil police force you will end up with an ad-hoc collection of private security, thugs, violent gangs, protection rackets, and so on. Due process will not exist and whatever problems you attribute to the current system will be much, much worse in this new "system".

> You do it through hard work on real reform at the local level, something that BLM (the organization) isn't really interested in.

But aren't you making the same type of over-generalization as the comment you are replying to?

I think there are many within the BLM movement who are working towards thoughtful change at the local level within their respective communities. But just like any large organization, the most extreme viewpoints tend to get the most attention, and those within the organization with the loudest voices tend to be the ones who push for the more extreme agendas.

I think it's important to keep in mind that any large organization is made up of individual people who each have their own opinions, motivations and goals, and often times those may be in conflict with the broader messaging of the group.

Your last paragraph really lost me though. I get it that you are addressing the most extreme version of the original post, but for me personally that didn't seem very constructive and I didn't find the appeals to fear mongering very convincing either.

> Instead of a civil police force you will end up with an ad-hoc collection of private security, thugs, violent gangs, protection rackets, and so on

Uh... I don't think that's what I said, at all. I said we need new cops and a new law enforcement organization, because the old one is polluted beyond redemption.

Perhaps I assumed a bit too much. You did indeed suggest that everything had to be replaced as opposed to discarded. I don't see how that is practical in the real world though.

I still would argue that your generalization that all policing is broken is very dangerous rhetoric and I don't think it is true). Civil society exists in part because of a tacit assumption that the police are always there to "police". At some level we agree to be policed. The non-police outnumber the police so there has to be some basic agreement that people will behave for it to all work.

If you convince everyone that the police as a whole are irredeemably bad/evil/racist etc. you've destroyed that tacit agreement and that civil society breaks down. We are seeing glimpses of that in the places where politicians and DAs have decided to put a pause on basic policing. A lot of people are discovering they don't have to behave.

The reason they do that is the policing doctrine changed.

Escalation of force to compliance.

They are literally trained to do that.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com