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Comment by Hnrobert42 | Hacker News Reader

Lots of speculation and innuendo in that article.

- Officer Tipping wasn’t investigating rape, but simply took the victim statement.

- The officer in the training exercise that killed Officer Tipping has the same name as the officer in Tipping’s report, but they are not sure if it is the same person.

- The medical examiner ruled the killing an accident. The article then quotes a tweet that says medical examiners undercount murders by police, implying collusion or coverup.

- There is no recording of the training. The article states that often video recordings are made, implying a cover up.

Abuse of power by the police is heinous. They are supposed to be our protectors, so I hate it as much as the next person.

But we must be led by fact not belief or we are no better than those who believe the Big Lie.

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> - The officer in the training exercise that killed Officer Tipping has the same name as the officer in Tipping’s report, but they are not sure if it is the same person.

It appears you did not finish reading TFA. There was an investigation that confirmed the same officer was at the training:

"Gage could not confirm that the officer accused of rape was the officer directly engaged in the training exercise with Tipping. But he said 'our investigation indicates that yes, it was.' "

And frankly, if you don't think it's suspicious that an officer who investigated four LAPD officers raping a woman later getting killed in a freak bicycle training accident isn't suspicious, you may need to reset your baseline for what is "speculation and innuendo." What happened here was extremely suspicious. Even before considering that one of those officers charged was at the training.

(One may even wonder why a police officer accused of rape was not only still on duty, but even training other officers.)

> And frankly, if you don't think it's suspicious

What? Mind reading. GP was mostly stating facts, not commenting about their own state of mind

My personal thoughts are very closely aligned with yours, btw

"If" is a conditional. When I say "If you are happy about that..." I'm not reading your mind.

> One may even wonder why a police officer accused of rape was not only still on duty, but even training other officers.

Because accusations are cheap enough to be weaponizable as a denial-of-service attack.

The penalty for false accusations is something pathetic, like 1 year.

Have you spent any time behind bars? A year of your life is not so laughable as to be pathetic.

Who actually serves a one-year sentence?

Ancient cultures from 2000 years ago had the solution to this already. Make a false accusation, get the punishment you were trying to pin on someone.

Simple as that. Even capital offences.

This doesn't mean that if a jury can't convict, the prosecution gets the punishment. Still need to be legally proven to have made false accusations.

Police officers are not held accountable commensurate to the incredible amount of power and influence they enjoy. They should be held to much much higher standards if they want to carry a monopoly on violence (including a loaded gun) wherever they stand.

They don't carry a monopoly on violence though? In the US, at least, you have the right to defend yourself which can include killing or detaining a person inflicting harm on you or others. This is the same thing cops can do.

It's a fair point, but they do have a unique form of monopoly on violence. They can "legitimately" initiate violence.

Initiate the violence.

Don't pay your property taxes, and ignore summons, etc? Eventually someone will show up at your door to toss you out of your house. If you just sit on your couch and say "nuh huh" eventually they will violently throw you out. If you use self defense to stop the violence, they'll simply kill you or incapacitate you.

Grow a funny plant in the wrong state? Eventually, if they find out, men with guns will bust into your house. They won't be 'self-defending' you into your custody, they will be initiating the violence against you to take you.

While self defense is 'violence' I think a lot of us just almost "don't count it." Self defense is more like stopping the violence, IMO.

Self defense can include stopping somebody from taking your property (maybe not every state?) This is comparable to not paying taxes. The taxes are legitimately owed to the government and so you have "stolen" from the government. Similar to stealing from an individual (in a sense).

You may not be a fan of killing over stolen property, but depending on the situation and state it is completely allowed. I think some states even allow you to kill a person who stole something from you while they are running away.

This means the initiation of physical violence can be initiated by you as well and be considered just.

Laws regarding weed are more nuanced, but it doesn't change that individuals can under certain circumstances initiate physical violence towards somebody legitimately.

I concede you're right. It's not a complete monopoly. My state would allow a citizen's arrest for felony theft, for instance. Generally killing someone over property is illegal, absent some unique circumstances (like breaking into an occupied structure).

I'm not aware of any state that allows you to use violence to collect on a contract, however. IF you see taxes as satisfaction of the social contract or whatever. It's hard for me to argue failure to pay taxes as theft; I'd call it more of failure to pay for an involuntary contract. IMO it would be much more appropriately be classified as a civil offense than a criminal one.

Well, not quite. Cops can do this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBUUx0jUKxc

And get away with it as a "justified" killing. Any regular person in the same situation would have been convicted of murder.

Maybe? The victim was reaching towards his back which complicates the situation. The police officer had already told him to not do that. This is almost certainly a twitchy cop who gave confusing commands like keep your hands up and also crawl and he probably should lose his job, but it isn't as easy as you seem to be conveying.

If you are civilian and are detaining a person for a just cause like they were trying to kill you or something (Daniel had been pointing a gun out of a window so it is reasonable to think he may try to kill somebody) and the person reached to his back like that you might not be convicted if you shoot them.

It seems to me like you are making the assumption that a civilian would be convicted. Do you have any examples for the same situation?

It's not at all surprising that a rapid sequence of confusing commands that was loudly yelled at him at a gunpoint, interspersed with threats, wasn't precisely followed - not to mention that "crawl towards me" and "keep your hands in the air at all times" are literally contradictory. I don't think I'd do better in his shoes - and you can look at the comments on that video and see for yourself just how many people have the same sentiment. Which is to say, a reasonable person should not be expected to be able to carry out such instructions precisely in this situation.

Oh, and cops are civilians, too. They just like to pretend otherwise, with that whole "sheepdog" insanity. And, unfortunately, in US, we've normalized this. But anyway, a non-cop would be convicted of assault already at the point they aimed a rifle at another person and told them to crawl. That aside, if by some miracle a similar situation did emerge, I can't see how the shooter wouldn't be convicted, since the usual standard for self-defense by lethal means is "imminent threat of death or significant bodily harm", which is eminently not the case in the video. The fact that the cop customized his AR-15 with an engraved dust cover that said "you're fucked" is a cherry on top that does give you a hint regarding the general state of mind of that cop.

FWIW I carry myself and know many other people who do, and they were all universally appalled at this case, even more than your average person.

I agree with much of what you said. I probably didn't convey my points clearly.

The victim clearly wasn't in a good position to shoot the cop even if he grabbed a gun. The cop would likely have had time to shoot, if necessary, if Daniel had pulled a gun. (Assuming the camera is the same perspective as his head).

There obviously wasn't an actual threat in this case but there was a perceived threat. The cop was there because Daniel was being reckless with a gun. I think that is the key reason why I am not sure there should be a conviction. Being reckless with a gun then reaching for your waist band / back when being told not to is clearly not a good thing to do.

I do think the cop is at fault for not giving clear directions, for contradicting his directions, etc. I'm not trying to victim blame or anything like that. I am saying I am not sure what the average person would do. You know he has a gun and he reached for the waist band. I think the average person would quite possibly shoot. I don't think the average person should be a cop just like I don't think this guy should be a cop.

whomst has right to defend themselves?

Legally it depends on the jurisdiction. In my view everybody has the right though.

Just to be clear you have the right to protect yourself or others from unjust violence not all violence. If you are about to murder somebody, another person does not have the right to stop a good Samaritan trying to stop the murder.

I agree with the spirit of your comment, but I wonder how it could translate into practice. It seems like it would be quite the boon to organized crime if you could rid yourself of a meddlesome cop simply by way of accusation.

Where do you see anyone saying anything about punishing people based just on accusations? That's not something anyone in this thread is advocating for.

>>> One may even wonder why a police officer accused of rape was not only still on duty, but even training other officers.

>> Because accusations are cheap enough to be weaponizable as a denial-of-service attack.

> Police officers are not held accountable commensurate to the incredible amount of power and influence they enjoy. They should be held to much much higher standards

Surely the context of this exchange is whether a police officer who has been accused of a crime still should be on active duty? Also I didn’t say ”punish”, I said ”get rid of”, which is effectively what happens if a cop is taken off duty pending investigation and potential court case.

> And frankly, if you don't think it's suspicious

It's definitely suspicious. But it needs to be proved beyond a reasonable doubt.

Of course it does. But this is an article on an online news source, not a court.

why? it's an article on a webpage. why should cops get to profile us if we can't profile them when they "fit the description"?

Not really, reasonable doubt should apply here. We should be holding our public servants to a much higher standard.

First, my very point is that when you have only suspicion, you must be extra skeptical of speculation and innuendo, not less.

Second, it is against the HN guidelines to accuse others of not reading the article.

Because, third, I did read that your quoted paragraph. I took it to mean, they believe but are not sure. As in “[he] could not confirm…”

Sadly, I struggle with your other points as they as suffer the same issues as the article. E.g., again, this was not a bicycle training, have the officers been formally charged? was the accused officer the trainer or a participant?

If you just look at the facts quoted from the coroners report, without looking at the circumstances, it sure sounds like this person was beaten to death. It does not sound like a training accident.

You’ll notice that on HN it is pretty common to see people pop into the comments about anything police-related with “Well actually there is no empirical logical reason to disbelieve the notion that the police are the arbiters of truth. You sir are doing a fallacy of the most egregious degree! In fact you are violating the very covenant of the guidelines upon which this very website is founded by arguing in such a noxious manner! I know this because my herculean intellect tells me so, as I do not even have opinions but only the zen mastery of Truth Itself!”

I haven’t quite figured out why there are so many staunchly pro-police people on a site where a lot of posters seem to lean kind of libertarian, but it’s an interesting and kind of amusing phenomenon.

> I haven’t quite figured out why there are so many staunchly pro-police people on a site where a lot of posters seem to lean kind of libertarian

An old joke: a libertarian is just a conservative who likes to smoke weed.

You don't think that a possible explanation for GP's post is principled disagreement that the article makes a good case, rather than necessarily ardent pro-cop bias?

I did not make any comment about the GP’s post in particular. I made a comment about a funny phenomenon of posting on HN in general. I specifically brought up posters using highfalutin’ fancy speech to cover an ardent pro-cop bias.

There are some posters that will use their perceived skill at language to do somersaults of logic in order to eventually land at “the police are the arbiters of truth” or something similar. The primary tactic is to use high school debate club language to put words in other people’s mouths in an attempt to discredit any view that doesn’t align with their premise of “the police are arbiters of truth.”

Do you think that that phenomenon does not exist?

> There are some posters that will use their perceived skill at language to do somersaults of logic...

I can agree that some people try to reason using language skills rather than reasoning from first principles

I’m glad that we agree about the phenomenon I’ve described. Happy to clear that up!

It is indeed weird how people use that trick to attempt to stamp out any detractors to the idea that the police are perfect stewards of truth.

I don't see that phenomena about cop boot-lickers on HN in particular more than anywhere else, but I'm sure it happens here sometimes too.

I also didn't think it was a well-written article, though. The fellow's injuries do not seem accidental if the article reported them accurately, but the connection to the rape case was pretty tenuous. It could be that, or something else that got him killed, or the article just got some facts wrong. The article didn't really give me confidence.

The “bootlicking” isn’t more prominent here than say, Twitter or Facebook, that’s for sure. It’s the manner of it that I think is amusingly distinct for this site.

On other platforms people will outright say “I back our boys in blue! I have a Punisher themed gun tattooed on my pubic mound!” On HN, instead of directly supporting the police and their narratives, there are posters that will pop up with no opinion other than “You are wrong” about anything that’s counter to police narratives. Instead of arguing for a narrative, they argue against any contrary narratives, usually on silly parliamentary grounds. This way they can support the police without appearing to support the police. It’s a fun little parlor trick!

It's because libertarians actually love the police and government when they're doing things that they like, like enforcing capitalism with violence, kidnapping and death.

>it is pretty common to see people pop into the comments about anything police-related with “Well actually there is no empirical logical reason to disbelieve the notion that the police are the arbiters of truth.

It's not just for police, HN is overwhelmingly a very pro-empirical community, much like the population it represents. One of the biggest weaknesses empiricists have as a mass movement is that they are extremely easily manipulated, so long as you are able to control the flow of information (which the police usually do).

A positivist must, by his or her principles, serve to bolster support for any likely genocidal dictator, murderer, what have you, until the bodies are actually found.

> There was an investigation that "confirmed" the same officer was at the training:

> But he said 'our investigation "indicates" that yes, it was.' "

Far be it from me to defend Reason, but I think you're overstating the degree of innuendo: the victim's statement directly accused 4 LAPD officers of rape, meaning that Tipping's conscience was the only thing between four men with guns and four potential, very long prison stays.

Combine that with the attorney's claim that one of the accused officers was at the training, and you have ample motive, cause, and setting. A court case would reveal more details, and that's precisely what the Tipping's family appears to be seeking.

I appreciate the nuance. These two comments summarize it for me:

> "Officer Tipping did not sustain any laceration to the head" and "was also not struck or beaten during this training session," Police Chief Michel Moore told the LAPD Board of Police Commissioners in June. "He did grapple with another officer, and both fell to the ground, resulting in a catastrophic injury to his spinal cord."

> Gage claims that Tipping wound up with three broken ribs, a lacerated liver, head injuries, and a broken neck. "His heart eventually stopped working because of his injuries" and "he was paralyzed….He had subdural hematomas at three places on the left side and three places on the right side. There is no way that grappling would have caused those injuries the way the LAPD portrayed it."

Which is to say: I don't know. A thorough investigation by a competent expert with no conflicts of interest seems necessary.

> Gage claims that Tipping wound up with three broken ribs, a lacerated liver

This is missing something.

CPR often results in broken/cracked ribs and abdominal injuries.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S266652042...

Giving someone with a neck injury CPR is a good way to make sure they stay dead, sure.

Was that your point?

I agree that there's lots of unhelpful innuendo there. Though suffering "three broken ribs, a lacerated liver, head injuries, and a broken neck...subdural hematomas at three places on the left side and three places on the right side" accidentally, during a "grappling exercise", raises some eyebrows.

As an amateur grappler, I don’t find it plausible those injuries would be suffered accidentally.

CPR causes injuries.

Half of the injuries are likely tied to the CPR.

The other half may or may not be related to the training event fall, or intentional violence.

Sure. There could be entirely ‘reasonable’ reasons for these injuries, but my smell test indicates that more questions are in order.

> Half of the injuries are likely tied to the CPR.

That's going to need some more review. As a paramedic, I've performed CPR more than 400+ times. In less than 5 of them were any ribs broken. Usually on frail elderly people.

Separation from the sternum is far more common, but will (apropos of other issues) cause bruising and a painful cough for a couple of weeks.

Laceration of the liver? Only once. Also on someone more elderly.

Certainly not impossible. But even with five or more firefighters pounding on someone's chest for 10-20 minutes or more, these injuries are rare - let alone all of them in one patient. These cops must have been trying to drive his ribs through the floor with their compressions.

> As a paramedic, I've performed CPR more than 400+ times. In less than 5 of them were any ribs broken. Usually on frail elderly people

Unlike comparison.

You're a paramedic, and at 400 times, I'd say you are an expert.

Highly doubt cops get that much experience.

It would be a freak accident for sure. But then a beating that breaks the spinal cord and other bones should leave many other obvious marks.

And it doesn't sound like these were the only two cops there. I can see a wall of silence or a couple cops taking out another. But for random cops at a training exercise to sit there while one gets beaten to death seems to be quite a stretch.

I've broken a rib (tenth) from an over under head and arm toss thrown by a 220lb-er in practice.

Broken rib to liver laceration makes sense.

Even a broken neck is plausible, but everything together... I don't know

I wonder how a medical examiner could possibly distinguish between bludgeoning injuries sustained as part of a simulated mob attack (accidental) and bludgeoning injuries sustained as part of a murder that took place during a simulated mob attack (not accidental).

I believe medical examiners make that determination based off the police report in cases like this. So if the cops said it was an accident, and the ME finds that the accidental injury was the cause of death, then it's an accidental death.

> The article then quotes a tweet that says medical examiners undercount murders by police, implying collusion or coverup.

Why do you believe this implies a cover-up? Could just be systemic bias, a big problem in the justice system.

systemic bias results in cover-up

I don't get it. No side denies that there was some sort of struggle which resulted in his death - how can that be accidental? Why would a "medical examiner" make that judgement?

Hard to take your views earnestly when you write:

“The officer in the training exercise that killed Officer Tipping has the same name as the officer in Tipping’s report, but they are not sure if it is the same person.”

Talk about grasping for incongruities… The article even mentioned it was, so why the misrepresentation from your end? Why present a view of moral skepticism for the accused on the one hand, while falsifying evidence for the accusers on the other?

“The name of one of the officers accused of rape ‘seems to correlate with one of the officers that was at the bicycle training,’ said Gage.”

“Gage could not confirm that the officer accused of rape was the officer directly engaged in the training exercise with Tipping. But he said 'our investigation indicates that yes, it was.' "

“Seems to correlate” “Could not confirm” “Indicates”

The two may indeed be the same person, but a fair reading is that they are presently unsure.

I agree that we shouldn't take this report to be dispositive. That is, we shouldn't just fling the cops at the training into prison. The issues raised in the article certainly seem suspicious and the thing to do with meaningful suspicions is investigate.

What's the "Big Lie"?

Generally speaking, "the Big Lie" refers to the idea that the 2020 US presidential election's result was fraudulent and Donald Trump was the true winner.

That's the most recent application; it comes more originally from one of the primary scapegoats used by the Nazis against the European Jews[1].

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_lie

True. I meant it in both senses. That is, if we don’t actively examine our biases, we are susceptible to whatever big lie is the Big Lie of the time.

The concept of a great lie or deception is really far older, present even in the biblical descriptions of Satan as the "Great Deceiver".

It's a term of art, referring to a specific kind of propaganda. I don't think it was inspired by that particular euphemism for Satan.

> I don't think it was inspired by that particular euphemism for Satan.

Agreed, just as the usage referring to denial of the 2020 US presidential election was not inspired by its usage by the Nazis.

My point is only that "Big Lie/Liar" or some variant thereof has been a phrase used rhetorically for millennia.

I think the connection between the Big Lie of Nazism and the Big Lie of our former president is pretty clear: it’s a well-understood historical term, with relevant parallels.

I find it difficult to believe that American journalists, an otherwise well-read and historically informed community of people, would conjure the concept without intending it as a reference. And certainly in that fashion more than as a prosaic form of “this lie was extra big.”

Edit: For example, here is an NPR article that explicitly makes the connection between the two Big Lies[1].

[1]: https://www.npr.org/2021/12/23/1065277246/trump-big-lie-jan-...

> the connection between the Big Lie of Nazism and the Big Lie of our former president is pretty clear

I agree that if the actual location of the truth is disregarded they are similar.

However, in these cases, the truth is on the opposite side of the accusation from each other.

Hitler untruthfully accused Jews of promoting a lie, and hence blaming them for Germany's defeat in WW1 and problems afterwards.

Whereas the former president has truthfully been accused of promoting a lie that he won the previous election.

When the truth is on the opposite side of the accusation in either case, they are really quite different usages of the phrase.

> I find it difficult to believe that American journalists, an otherwise well-read and historically informed community of people, would conjure the concept without intending it as a reference

I don't think there is any intentional journalistic allusion happening by using the term. "Big" and "Lie" are such utterly common words by themselves and together in English that people readily understand them in the immediately relevant context. Calling it a "Great Misrepresentation" or something else would be beating around the bush instead of just calling it what it is.

I think you're confusing yourself: Hitler's Big Lie was the lie that the Jews promoted a falsehood. Trump's Big Lie was the lie that he actually won the US election.

In both cases, the direction of the lie is the same. Your confusion seems to stem from the fact that the original Big Lie is a lie about a lie. But this doesn't change the actual structural, namely: a Big Lie is a gross distortion of truth, so gross that its believers take its size to be evidence of veracity itself.

Both Hitler's and Trump's Big Lie conform to this exact structure: the lies of International Jewry and a Stolen Election are so great, so inconceivable, that they stagger the listener into consideration.

> I don't think there is any intentional journalistic allusion happening

I gave you a link to an article where the allusion is direct and explicit. Or do you think they came up with the phrase themselves, Googled it, and retconned it into place?

> Hitler's Big Lie was the lie that the Jews promoted a falsehood.

Just going on the wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_lie) page, feel free to rebut it if you think it's incorrect:

"Hitler claimed that the [Big Lie] technique had been used by Jews to blame Germany's loss in World War I on German general Erich Ludendorff, who was a prominent nationalist political leader in the Weimar Republic."

So the term "Big Lie" in that case wasn't Hitlers lie as you claim, but the technique he (untruthfully) claimed that the Jews used in his efforts to scapegoat them.

If the wiki page is correct, the usages we are discussing have the opposite truth structure. If the wiki page is incorrect, then I'd recommend you suggest an edit to correct it.

It's in the second graf of the page:

> Herf maintains that Joseph Goebbels and the Nazi Party actually used the big lie technique that they described – and that they used it to turn long-standing antisemitism in Europe into mass murder.

In other words, there are two Big Lies that originate with Hitler: the claimed Big Lie, and the actual Big Lie.

Exactly. Like the West's "Big Lie" on the whole 'War on Terror' operation justifying and using the media to fool the public with Iraq having possession of "Hidden WMDs in Iraq with Saddam Hussein about to launch them in minutes"; as a justification of invasion and repeating this lie when they knew it was false.

A propaganda technique which fooled the world into a forever war that never should have happened in the first place which Wikipedia won't mention or tell you about.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rationale_for_the_Iraq_War

"Accusations of faulty evidence and alleged shifting rationales became the focal point for critics of the war, who charge that the Bush administration purposely fabricated evidence to justify an invasion that it had long planned to launch."

Donald Trump's claim that he won the 2020 election.

Personally, unless I see something with my own eyes, it is the same as Time Cube.

Then it makes just as little sense to speculate on innocence as it does to speculate on guilt.

Haha, yes, of course. In fact, come to think of it, is object permanence a reasonable concept? Once I am no longer perceiving an object aren't I just relying on a fallible memory of it?

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