Hacker News Reader

Comment by qchris | Hacker News Reader

HN has always seemed to me to be a community that is moved by data-driven approaches, and this topic has a pretty clear motivation to reduce police violence. As a result, I think some people may be interested in reading up on Comapign Zero's[1] 8Can'tWait initiative (https://8cantwait.org/), which has identified, tracked [2], and advocated for 8 policy implementations across municipalities in the U.S. which meaningfully reduce instances of police violence.

The policies include a Use of Force Continuum, Comprehensive Reporting requirements, De-escalation Requirements (which, here, in the context of mental health response is particularly valuable), and more. There are links at the bottom of their website which can help you dig more into their methods, if you're interested.

[1] https://www.joincampaignzero.org/

[2] https://useofforceproject.org/#review

View on HN

Some of those proposals are good, others are terrible and totally unrealistic. In particular requiring law enforcement to always give a warning before using deadly force and ban shooting at moving vehicles will put them and the general public at greater risk. Sure police should issue a warning whenever possible but there are always going to be exceptional situations. For example terrorist attacks, mass shootings, and hostage situations.

Then they can claim an exception to the rule caused by exceptional circumstances. The overwhelming supermajority of police activity doesn't require dealing with terrorists (including active shooters and hostage situations).

Maybe SWAT can have slightly different rules regarding RoE, but those should be the exception.

That's the point. The #8CantWait proposal is problematic because it calls for strict bans without accounting for real world situations.

As for active shooter situations, guidelines now call for the first responding officer to immediately move in and attempt to stop the shooter by any means necessary. They aren't supposed to wait for a SWAT team to respond. It's ridiculous to propose separate use of force rules for them.

Like I said, exceptional circumstances can be exceptions to the rules. We can define a separate RoE for dealing with clear terrorists, but most cops will never engage with a terrorist.

It doesn't feel like you're trying to make a charitable interpretation of what everyone is asking for. You're welcome to suggest improvements to the language, but writing off the idea because of a "well actually" attitude smells of ideology.

Not at all. The problem is that the proposal is absolute and doesn't contain exceptions. It feels like you're intentionally missing the point due to ideology.

Sounds like this probably won't be a productive discussion then. Cheers.

Shooting into a moving car is insanely dangerous. The expected outcome is an uncontrolled moving car.

There are some limited situations where an uncontrolled moving car is less dangerous then a controlled car being actively used as a weapon. For example, in the 2016 Nice truck attack if a police officer had a clear shot at the driver should they have avoided taking the shot?

Using a one time unique event as the reason for dismissing a provably valuable policy change isn’t very rational.

It would be like using a single child’s death caused by a vaccine as the reason to ban all vaccines.

Simply put, such a policy to save far more lives that it would cost, which must count for something. Or perhaps we should also stop using seatbelts and airbags.

There are certainly more examples beyond that one event. I support additional reasonable restrictions on police use of force but they have to allow for human judgment in unusual situations rather than flat bans.

Those proposing these restrictions see everything in shades of grey, to most of them it is self evident that officers would be able to exercise judgementand defend themselves after the fact by pointing at an exception. Those opposed tothe restrictions see everything as black and white, you do what the law says or you go to jail. I think... Generalizations are always always wrong.

Sometimes that's a preferable outcome to the alternative. The North Hollywood shootout is an extreme example, but it illustrates the point; if bank robbers in a car are shooting at everybody they see, the cops shooting back at them is the only reasonable response.

This doesn't mean cops should be making a habit of having high speed shootouts on freeway; nobody wants that. It means the rules need to allow reasonable leeway for people to do what they think is appropriate in the unique situations they encounter. Blanket bans enacted by people reasoning about generalized scenarios are not a good idea. Those sort of absolute rules are too simplistic to be good for anything other than pandering to crowds.

Better than a controlled moving car aiming for pedestrians.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com