I upvoted this comment for that; it seems like a prudent step to take.
> the only good cop is a dead cop
And then I got here and wish I could undo. I don't understand why you would say such a thing. That's just not right.
Is the attitude morally right? Immaterial.
Also, like hell morality is immaterial.
Their job is hard. They deal with assholes the likes of which most of us never see, they get shot at and kicked and punched and spat at and sworn at, and still their job is to protect and serve the public without fail. No shortcuts.
But instead, they do everything they can to stick with and make-proper the mistake, and pettily punish those who don't just submit and take it. They know full well that time in their jail is (an extrajudicial) punishment in and of itself. This entire blue-shield assume-everyone's-guilty mentality makes them just another gang of thugs to be avoided. The fact they're given a fancy costume by the out of touch populations of whatever jurisdiction they're in ceases to be relevant.
While still extremely callous, one would take far less issue with what I said if it were explicitly about "violent gangbangers". And given that the problem is institutional yet new recruits are still signing up for the trip, I have little empathy.
edit: and I will admit that short of things like automated home-defense turrets becoming commonplace, empathy is the only thing that is going to fix anything and what I said actually hurts that. But given that the problem stems from police getting things mostly right (because most of who they interact with are criminals), I don't see reforms to make them impartial justice organizations ever gaining much support, as the sheer majority will always see them as doing a good job.
Oh yeah, this would not cause more problems than it solves.
There are a lot of people who would instigate an officer for that kind of money.
Besides, having served on a Jury, I know what they think my time is worth. Getting a check for $200 (a more realistic number) would be an insult after getting stuck overnight in a jail cell.
> But instead, they do everything they can to stick with and make-proper the mistake, and pettily punish those who don't just submit and take it
This could be said about the first group, but he even admits that his own actions are what got him put into solitary confinement. If he hadn't made a ruckus they wouldn't have put him there. Note that they did overstep by doing that, but not massively.
This amount wouldn't meet what I said, as they'd still clearly be externalizing the collateral damage from their approach (just like the jury theatre, as you point out).
> If he hadn't made a ruckus they wouldn't have put him there
Which stemmed from them denying him access to medical care, outside communication, and due process. I covered this under "pettily punish those who don't just submit and take it".
They really should up the qualifications on becoming a cop. Right now it's "Eh I can't any other job, guess I'll just be a cop" and you're left with these incoherent slimeballs thinking they run things without any regard for actual law.
I've been thrown in a cell for one week. I was drunk the night before, woke up in a cell. No window, no view, locked door. I was slipped cheese sandwiches for a week and juice boxes.
Do you know what that does to a persons sanity? After day 3 I had literally just accepted it, that I'm staying here with 0 answers and that's just the way it is.
Who is accountable for that? Nobody. Nobody gave me any answers.
but the one that cracked me up the most was "This is where my weekend of police training really kicks in."
Holding is truly screwed up. When I went I saw so many shitty things. Cops abuse their power every day. I should have known when the managers at my shitty University food stop started on a power trip when I worked there and fired me for eating 8 old wings that were left over when I only ordered 6 for my meal... Went against protocol (needed three strikes, only got one). When I was arrested I was really drunk, I was slammed, and forced to sign a piece of paper banning me from a local college campus indefinitely. They said if I signed they'd let me go. Then they arrested me right after I signed it. Slammed multiple times because I said I couldn't leave into the snow with only socks on since my shoes were in my friends room.
Cops will take the best candidates they can get. They don't get a lot of people wanting to be a cop. It's a shitty job that most people would not do by choice.
This sentiment is a wish for things to get worse for everyone, in every way. It's lazy, cowardly, and beneath HN.
But while I agree that an attitude like that will lead to nothing constructive, at some point one's only recourse is spite.
Perhaps OP will receive monetary compensation after a drawn out lawsuit, only because there are specific things the arresting officer can be pinned with. But the worst that will happen to the officer is that she will lose her job, rather than be brought to trial for her crimes. And everybody else in the chain that dug in their heels to make him miserable rather than treat him as a human is utterly unaccountable.
And I see no avenues of recourse for fixing these systematic abuses. Reform will always be hampered by the fact that the sheer majority of people that police deal with are actually guilty, and that the sheer majority of people don't get arrested. That's two very strong priors that lead to the police being nearly universally accepted as "the good guys".
The only way that's going to change is by eroding the idea of police as de facto heroes, and promoting the idea that they are a malevolent culture that needs to be deprecated so new institutions can take their place. Otherwise, there's no incentive for them to ever change.
Police have a responsibility to the people they protect. Right now in the US, cops act like the public are there simply to be subjugated, and regularly and routinely shirk that responsibility inherent in the task of policing.
The whole reason we as a society give cops the monopoly on violence is because they're supposed to operate at a higher standard. Police in the US don't do that, as is evidenced by the police force in any major US city.
It's time for a system reboot.
I wonder if, somewhere out there, there exists a Bizarro Earth where people go out of their way to tell everybody about their pleasant interactions with police. I just had one last night, actually. Very friendly dude, and it wasn't the first time this had happened.
One of my friends, when I was younger, had the attitude pig until proven cop. And the more of this stuff that's floating around the less tenable the contrary position becomes.
Given that he called 911, he definitely had some connection to the situation.
In order to make these officers spends years in prison you will need law to apply. And that will take pressure and public shaming through posts like this. If you feel so hot headed about this issue you can sign up with organizations like ACLU and the like and help bring the change.
Or, you can play gansta, go at it vigilante fashion, and see how far that takes you.
Hacker News is rapidly becoming Reddit. Reddit has its place, but this is not a good thing.
When somebody finds the next Hacker News, please let me know.
(I expect this comment to be downvoted, and it probably should be. Just expressing my frustration.)
Smaller subreddits seem to have much better discussion as well.
You're 0 for 2 with me so far. Don't join the debate team.
Do you read this 1000+ word well written point as "having no more substance than 'cops should die'"? Or did you simply decide that you should just ignore that post since it didn't fit your utterly insane narrative? Never mind the fact that even the exact post youre referencing doesn't even say the thing you keep claiming it says...
I'm sure I'll continue being 0 for as long as I'm arguing a different point than yours, because you've shown that its not evidence, or eloquence that matters, rather how well aligned the other person's argument is aligned with your own. I doubt there is a forum where you will fit in well. Maybe you can just scream irrational nonsense at people on 4chan or something?
Why do so many people attempt a proof-by-example and then act surprised when it fails to convince?
"The person I'm responding to LITERALLY said he wanted all police to die" "Well, he didn't literally say that, in fact, he didn't say anything close to that".
"fuck the police shouldn't be the top comment" evidence is presented to the contrary "Dude, its not like I meant THIS top comment".
There's no chance you're anything but a troll or stupid, so either way, I'm wasting my time. Cheers.
"Voting should be independent of opinion, should it not? Voting should reflect the merit of a post regardless of its popularity, right? Comments with little more substance than "cops should die" shouldn't be at the top of a comment page, right?"
Sentence by sentence just to make it easy on you:
"Voting should be independent of opinion, should it not? Voting should reflect the merit of a post regardless of its popularity, right?"
What does this even mean? How on earth would this work? He's genuinely upset that voting reflects peoples opinions? I'm shocked that someone could say this and not immediately realize what a dumb thing it is to say. But yeah, this problem in his mind, will be solved by finding a different community, with opinions he likes. See the problem now?
"Comments with little more substance than "cops should die" shouldn't be at the top of a comment page, right?""
Right. And they aren't. So what is the complaint? Oh right, its a stupid strawman with no merit whatsoever, which i pointed out. If BlackDeath3 wants to throw a tantrum when someone says cops could die, he's more than welcome, but the idea that this is what he bases his argument on when no one said anything like that is utter lunacy. I cannot imagine going around being this irrationally angry. It's like being a republican and just screaming BENGHAZI!!! whenever confronted with something unsavory about your own party. Try living on planet earth with some rational people.
If I think that somebody has said something worth exposure, I upvote it. If not, I downvote it. It has nothing to do with whether I agree with it or not. Does it contribute to the conversation? Is it needlessly inflammatory? These are the sorts of questions I ask and answer when voting.
You can argue that "worth exposure" is subjective, and it is, but I didn't say (or mean) vote objectively. One can try, but mostly I just meant that one should pay more attention to the merit of a post's content, rather than their personal agreement with it.
>Right. And they aren't. So what is the complaint?
You're too focused on the specifics. Shitty comments get upvoted all the time. Thoughtful but unpopular comments get downvoted all the time. Anybody who has been around these sorts of places (HN, Reddit, etc.) for more than an hour has seen it happen.
And by the way, the "cops should die" comment quite literally was the top comment in this thread at one point. Perhaps you weren't here early enough to see it, but I did, and that's what made me say what I said.
Probably the first time I've ever seen someone lament the idea that someone focused on the specific example they gave...
Anyway, I've seen this happen on reddit plenty, but I would honestly say its a distant second place to the bigger problem, which is what is happening here. Someone like you gets the idea in their head that "saying thing x is popular amongst community y". At that point, all logic goes out the window and actual, reasonable evidence is ignored at the cost of any sort of evidence that remotely confirms your hypothesis. Was the top comment of a thread something bad about cops for a few seconds? Hey, that must mean everyone here wants cops to die, which means the voting system is flawed which means I should throw a tantrum and threaten to leave the community. Like I said, I have no problem with responding to people who actually said this and discussing it, but when you start throwing tantrums about things that weren't said, there is a disconnect between a logical world where people can have conversations, and the world where youre sitting in a room by yourself mashing the keyboard and convincing yourself everyone else is stupid. I'd say you'd probably be better off letting these insane thoughts go...
It's clear that nobody will be persuading anybody here, that we're both right in our own eyes, and this is going nowhere. I'm tired of trying to explain myself to you. I'm tired of you constantly ending your posts with (not so) clever remarks about how I'm a stupid trolling troll. I'm tired of you. You're argumentative for argumentation's sake (which is fine when you can listen to reason) and I'm really, actually, truly done with you now. Bye.
In response to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7241518 (because apparently I'm submitting posts too often):
I've clearly explained above the way that I think the voting system should work, and I'm not even close to the only person who thinks that way (see: Reddiquette). You've crossed the line from argumentative to disingenuous.
I realize that you strongly dislike me, but please don't allow that to cloud your vision when reading my posts.
Uhhhhh, I know nothing about you at all. I simply mocked the fact that you threw a tantrum over the voting system on this site, said you were leaving (yet you're still making posts at the frequency that you're literally making the algo block you because you're posting too often...), said "I wish the top post wasn't always some no content crap like 'all cops should die'" when a) It didn't say that and b) The actual top post was, quite literally, the exact opposite of your mid-tantrum prediction. If you've taken me mocking your hilariously bad point to mean a strong dislike, I really don't know what to tell you. Perhaps the rest of us don't hold the same irrational grudges you do? But the idea of this level of emotion for a stranger on the internet is simply too foreign for me to understand.
"You're argumentative for argumentation's sake (which is fine when you can listen to reason) and I'm really, actually, truly done with you now. Bye."
So should I take this to mean that you're going to be responding to my posts literally hundreds of times over the next hour? Because thats what happened when you said you were done with HN? Or was that because you were just being an attention whore making a shit point?
"Another poster has even explained my position to you (oddly enough, they have no trouble understanding the points I'm making here)."
I love the "I've been totally civil" next sentence "heres a not at all subtle dig from me! LOOK HOW CLEVER I AM" Bravo for pretending you're taking the high road? I guess you convinced yourself and that seems to be all that matters for you. But yeah, one guy agreed with you while everyone else downvoted you. I guess this is better than you normally do so I can see why you're proud.
In closing, no, I don't strongly dislike you, or even care about you at all. I simply think that throwing a tantrum about a community, saying it is so terrible you have to leave because your opinions aren't popular, and then making up a bunch of idiotic, disingenuous straw men to make yourself feel better is stupid and is nothing but a detriment to this community. As I said originally, don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out.
Exactly the opposite. Do not fuck the police.
If that were the case, democracy would actually work.
I love Reddit, but outside of certain subs it is not a productive place to discuss complex situations as the crowd naturally wants the story simplified. So you end up with a day 1 version where one actor is clearly the aggrieved party, the other pure villain, and everyone runs out to send nasty emails and to fill voiceboxes with nasty messages. On day 2 a new piece of information comes out that demonstrates that the story was't as stated, and some new situations completely upset who the good guy and the bad guy is. The pitchfork mob goes in the opposite direction. It is useless and destructive, and became such a problem that a number of anti pitchfork rules had to be imposed.
In this case the post I replied to outrageously declared that the only good cop is a dead cop, which is incredibly offensive if you actually have friends who are in law enforcement. And even if you don't, it should be offensive to virtually anyone in a lawful society who relies upon those people more than many of you care to admit.
Add that there is some hilarious irony in a board primarily dominated by the unfit and privileged supporting such notions. I can understand the sentiment in some poverty city inner-city neighbourhood (heck, I grew up in poverty and was surrounded by the "pig" attitude), even if it is often self-defeating, but it is to the point of parody on HN.
"I heard a story about some cop two thousand miles away who did {x}. See, they're all terrible!"
That is the brutal truth. It's why the site favors memes over dissertations.
It's hostility. Maybe it's been earned.