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Comment by mediaman | Hacker News Reader

A lot of this "we don't care about criminals" attitude is cover for many Americans' feelings around race. Despite being only 12% of the American population, there are more black people in prison than whites (though this ratio is improving). Incarcerating black people has a long history going back to the post-Civil War environment when some states created a web of laws designed to incarcerate black people, because they were no longer allowed to own them as slave property.

So when you hear people say "well, Floyd committed a crime previously," it's the long shadow of the past of (1) criminalizing them and then (2) dehumanizing them, in order to treat them as low value chattel - justifying killings or other mistreatment.

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Let me preface this with: George floyd was essentially subjected to an execution without trail and nothing about the officers use of force was justifiable.

That said I think it disgusting to pretend that George Floyd was subject to a "web of laws designed to incarcerate black people", unless that web of laws targeting only black people includes prosecuting things like armed robbery. If his priors had only included things like jaywalking or drug possession I might agree with you.

"In 2007, Floyd faced charges for aggravated robbery with a deadly weapon; according to investigators, he had entered an apartment by impersonating a water department worker and barging in with five other men, then held a pistol to a woman's stomach."

If anyone wants to talk about disproportionate prosecution thats fine. I think more armed robbers should be in jail to protect innocent victims, and if that means catching more white or asian ones I'm all for it.

Sentencing disparities are disgraceful but I thought I remember reading that they largely disappeared if you adjusted for prior convictions and mitigating circumstances(armed robbery with an straw purchased gun vs. a bat for example). Also I think somewhat related were economic reasons(affording a better lawyer), and honestly though tackling poverty is probably a better way to prevent future criminals, we still need to do something about today's criminals and protect future victims.

In 2007, Floyd faced charges for aggravated robbery

OK, and? That quote is from Wikipedia and I'm sure that you read on and saw the next few sentences documenting that he served 5 years in prison for that crime, and then worked with rehab mentoring organizations and was never again charged with a violent crime or property crime. He was briefly arrested in 2019 for possession of opiates due to his personal drug addiction.

I think more armed robbers should be in jail to protect innocent victims

But he went to prison, for 5 years. Armed robbery is bad for sure, but how long do you want to keep people in prison? Nobody was shot or otherwise injured. After he was released, there were no similar offenses. Why would you still want to treat him like a violent criminal 13 years later?

>OK, and?

I was responding to the disingenuous claims in the original post.

>Nobody was shot or otherwise injured

Being held at gunpoint might not cause physical injuries but its dismissive to pretend it causes no injuries.

>After he was released, there were no similar offenses. Why would you still want to treat him like a violent criminal 13 years later?

I wouldn't, don't attribute the strawman in your head to me.

More relevant to the original post I responded to I also wouldn't pretend he was only subject to a "web of laws designed to incarcerate black people" after getting punished for committing a violent crime.

You wanted to refute a claim about what happened in 2020 by bringing readers back to 2007, while omitting any mention of the prison term and rehabilitation but articulating the need to put violent criminals in prison.

Then you say you were responding to disingenuity? Sorry, no sale.

> according to investigators

Investigators also once said "After Floyd got out of his car, he physically resisted officers. Officers were able to get the suspect into handcuffs and noted he appeared to be suffering medical distress. Officers called for an ambulance. He was transported to Hennepin County Medical Center by ambulance where he died a short time later."

I don't always trust what investigators say, especially ones from a department that once jailed Floyd for 15 days for "failure to identify to a police officer" (???), and later murdered him.

Edit: Apologies, it was actually a different department that murdered him.

"Floyd was arrested three months later during a traffic stop and a 7-year-old victim of the robbery identified him from a photo array"

Maybe the 7 year old who identified him was coerced by detectives. Anything is possible. That doesn't mean we discount all evidence presented with the thought terminating cliche "ACAB".

I'm not discounting any evidence. I accept that the department presented that pretty weak-sounding evidence, and it's possible they got the right guy. However, the actual woman he threatened did not identify him, the method of identification is no longer used by the department (nowadays a photo array has to be presented by officers who don't know any of the suspects, so they can't introduce any bias), there was no physical evidence at all, there is an incredibly long documented history of police lying in cases just like this one, there is an equally long history of defendants being pushed into plea deals despite their innocence, 7 year olds are not reliable even in the best of circumstances, and Floyd himself maintained his innocence before and after his jail time. Based on the totality of the evidence I'm aware of, I believe there's a significant chance Floyd was innocent of this charge.

I'm very comfortable saying that even in an ideal future where racial harmony has been achieved and police misconduct is a distant memory, if placed on a jury I still would never convict someone on the sole evidence of a 7-year-old's photo array testimony 3 months after the crime occurred.

I for one think the officers have to prove that their word is trustworthy, and they have not.

In absense of other evidence, I'll presume innocence, and that the officer is lying. That's what the thought terminated ACAB means there, a presumption of innocence.

I also would not trust eye witness identification in many cases. Especially from a seven year old.

The criminal justice system in the US demonstrably does not rehabilitate convicts. There is a clear causal link between being incarcerated for something like drug possession or petty theft and committing more serious / violent offenses in the future. Not to justify George Floyd's actions, but this is exactly the "web of laws designed to incarcerate black people".

Labels, particularly dismissive labels, cause harm.

Someone who is known to have committed a crime in the past, is what 'criminal' should mean. However the word has decayed to implicitly meaning 'career criminal', which might also be an apt label. Contrast to the phrase 'reformed criminal'.

The problem of __dismissive labels__ rather than specific labels being bad, hadn't been conveyed to me previously and this helps me see the rhetoric about avoiding other dismissive terms such as 'homeless' in a clearer light. Even the new PC terms often only get used in the same way; which does not solve the problem, nor communicate why the change in phrasing was necessary.

> "web of laws designed to incarcerate black people",

I disagree. There is indeed a web of laws and subsidies that makes black people to chose a career of crime.

It starts with public schooling system. Black ghettos have some of the countries worst schools. These schools fail all the black kids in their early formative years. This blame is not on racist white conservatives but teachers union funded political left.

Not only black kids fail to get a good education, their overall lack of abilities are glorified by political left in the name of multiculturism. Failure to speak good english, dress well, do basic math, reading and writing etc. is something portrayed as uniquely black things that somehow we should celebrate. A black kid who does well academically is called a coconut. The kid who is out of school can not find a job or unpaid work because of minimum wage laws enacted by political left.

If you are white kid and 17 years old it is much easier to find a job. You have a social connections, other white people trust you and other small business owners are mostly white. If you are black kid of a single mom living in a ghetto getting that first job is incredibly hard. How do you survive then ?

Your bad second hand car gets tickets which you can't pay. You get arrested for not paying them. Out of desperation you learn to peddle drugs and go to jail a few times. You record means you can never get even the lowest of low jobs at Costco or Walmart. The only choice you have now is to continue working in the underground economy which has worst of ethics and higher probability of getting jailed.

Warren Buffet use to say that the modern cash register made an entire generation of Americans more honest. He had a point. Larger dishonesty starts with smaller thefts. But reverse is also true, if you are never exposed to honest work, it is hard for you to stay out of jail in this country.

I do feel crime among black people is a systemic issue and not an issue of genetics and both political left and right are responsible for pushing them into this sad state.

PS: My arguments are mostly based on Thomas Sowell's work around race. He has put in lot of efforts to show that while culture matters, the culture itself is not determined by genetics. Culture evolves based on incentives.

regarding George Floyd's history as a pregnant women stomach stickin' bad man, dunno if that counts.

As a practical matter, I'd say it's more along the lines of just how do you control a crazy acting person without hurting them. A certain number of them are going to die, there's no way around it. Most people would probably agree that a lot of traffic stops and arrests are for chickenshit offenses. Add to that the fact that police are wired a little like German Shepherds. You run, they chase.

>> As a practical matter, I'd say it's more along the lines of just how do you control a crazy acting person without hurting them. A certain number of them are going to die, there's no way around it.

That’s… quite a summary of a cop putting his knee on someone’s neck while people all around screamed at him that the man was suffering, and staying in that position until the man died. Floyd was already on the ground and had four armed policemen surrounding him - how was he a threat, or someone who couldn’t just be hauled up and cuffed / placed in a police car? Compare it for example to the almost-courteous way Dylan Roof - who committed a crime far worse than anything Floyd ever did - was treated by the police when they finally caught up to him.

I’m sorry but you sound like a right wing TV host doing their best to paper over the truth / make it about anything else but the inherent racism of American policing. Perhaps if Floyd was an aberration your point might hold - but this is clearly a pattern, as we’ve seen over and over. The only way to solve the problem is by understanding its roots, not blasé statements reducing it to statistics and a “crazy acting man” who couldn’t be subdued without hurting him.

Honestly, it's remarkable how often they hold (or held, now that it's unpopular) people down in just that way. There's a few other not-nice ways to disable someone.

Usually they don't die. Designing a protocol is not such an easy thing.

Talk to someone who has worked in a cell-extraction team, it's a pretty outrageous scene.

'inherent racism'? Sounds like someone who has a purely internet knowledge of policing. The world's a complicated place. Save your outrage to bore your friends.

Perhaps you should educate yourself about this, instead of dismissing it as outrage to bore my friends with. You can start with this article:

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/07/20/the-invention-...

I didn’t bring it up before because it wasn’t germane to my point, but I’m an African man (from West Africa, where the effects of chattel slavery are still being felt every day) who has lived in the US for a decade. So yes, as a person who has experienced both the racism displayed to us people living in the so-called “third world”, as well as racism in the US, I think I am entitled to my outrage. Perhaps working in a cell-extraction team as you said is making you take this personally. But this isn’t about you, it’s about a system set up after slavery to keep black people in their place. It doesn’t mean every policeman / woman is racist, just as I wouldn’t say “all white people are racist” just because they continue to benefit from a system that was setup to heavily favor them. So please don’t dismiss my viewpoint as mere outrage informed by the Internet. Of course the world is a complicated place - even back home not all our problems can be blamed on slavery and colonialism (we have had terrible leaders, our government is rife with corruption etc). That doesn’t mean racism’s effects don’t play a huge part in our current state, or continue to lead to young black men especially having their lives treated as more expendable than their white counterparts.

There's also a lot of cultural propaganda that promotes the idea that the justice system is fair and unbiased. People instilled to think of themselves as the collective embodiment of perfection can't accept anything less than that. Hence if you've entered the meat grinder of the system you must have done something to deserve it because the system is designed to protect our Freedom™.

There has to be though, no? If the popular perception of how order is kept is that it is a random draw of minorities from a hat then it would no longer serve the purpose of being a disincentive to do crime.

You can probably draw a very clear line between 'perception of fairness in the criminal justice system's and 'likelyhood to commit crime'.

>cultural propaganda that promotes the idea that the justice system is fair and unbiased.

I'll take what you might think of as a third track.

It's not so much that it's biased, but that it's arbitrary. Especially at the Federal level, the disparity in sentencing is remarkable..and it isn't just the difference in lawyer quality depending on wealth.

Disproportionate incarceration is downstream* of disproportionate violence. Murder stats, which are relatively reliable since dead bodies are hard to disappear without careful planning and effort, demonstrate this. Why there's disproportionate violence in black communities need not involve genetics. Don't most people agree that black Americans got the short end of the stick historically? The ramifications include dynamics like shitty ghetto economies that make crime look like an attractive option.

*I do think there's plenty of racism, institutional and otherwise, embedded in the "justice" system itself. Sentencing disparities are a travesty. But it's more complex than you implied.

This statement may miss or minimize the argument for / against participation in a gang, especially without the presence of a paternal figure in a person's life, especially a young male's life ... who then becomes a father ... who then is removed from life due to decisions in circumstances ... whose child then grows up without a paternal figure, who then finds solace in a gang... who then...

See the cycle?

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And then there's the argument for why gangs exist in the first place, or other small, localized militias providing protection and a place of belonging.

"Just don't commit crimes, 4head" misses... a lot.

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