Comment by wtvanhest | Hacker News Reader

Comment by wtvanhest | Hacker News Reader

Police brutality is terrible and should be eliminated from our society. Hopefully the proliferation of officer mounted, always-on cameras can help minimize it. We should continued to do what we can to minimize it and should pay attention to stories like this one.

This story invokes emotion but even after he released all the documents it still doesn't ring true. Part of it is the language used and the overly cautious structure about his thoughts and actions. The following paragraph just didn't seem like a true representation of his thought process:

"Rich SOMA, poor SOMA. My instinct was to make this distinction go away, to show them I know our neighborhood is more complicated than that. To connect on human terms. I told them that it was an early stage startup; I’m doing this because I feel it’s a way to make the world around me better, to bring people joy through better food. I live here, right on this block, in a loving home with 16 roommates. I love this community. I asked them where they lived. And they responded in unison: “Far away! We can’t afford to live here.”"

Yeah, this guy comes off as really smug and obnoxious in his own words. I have no doubt the police overreacted and acted unjustly, but I also think there's more to this story than we're getting.

Is there a lawsuit pending? What's the cops' account of these events?

The police report is now posted in the story (it wasn't there when this was posted a few weeks ago after the incident).

It sounds like the cops told him to leave (aka cross the street) and he didn't, so they pushed him down and cuffed him for refusing to leave. Sounds like excessive force to me, and wtf @ arresting him and putting him in jail for that.

But really, it sounds like the whole thing could have been avoided if he just walked a ways away from the scene and let everyone do their job. Why make a big deal out of being told to cross the street? That's the part that smells funny to me.

They made a (EDIT: seemingly) nonsensical request and used his confusion as an excuse to abuse their discretionary powers.

Sounds like a strategy they use to bag naive bystanders. Power tripping / stats-boosting, plain and simple.

What was nonsensical about their request?

Right. Anybody who's been a first responder will recognize the importance of the request.

I see where you're coming from. Perhaps I should have said "seemingly nonsensical" (I'm sure the bystanders think they're being helpful). The point doesn't change in the slightest.

Correct response: "You've done good, but it's time to let the EMTs take things from here."

Incorrect response: "Move to the other side of the street. [Arrest for hesitation.]"

You labeled the responses wrong. The one you labeled "Correct" should have been labeled "Would be nice to see but totally unreasonable to expect"; the one you labeled "Incorrect" should have been labeled "Abrupt but to be expected from a cop who has more important things to think about than pandering to the ego of a bystander".

Nope, I labeled them correctly. Your expectations of what would happen (which align with my own) have no bearing on what is right or wrong.

Police officers have better things to do than "pandering to the ego of a bystander" (is that what they're calling politeness these days)? Then surely they have much better things to do than spending hours engaging in an egregious miscarriage of justice to flatter their own notions of self-importance (i.e. that they deserve unquestioning obedience even in non-urgent situations). Except that they clearly didn't. So what, exactly, are the "more important things" they have to think about?

Your expectations of what would happen (which align with my own) have no bearing on what is right or wrong.

I wasn't talking about expectations about what would actually happen. I was talking about your claims about what was right or wrong, with which I disagree. See below.

"pandering to the ego of a bystander" (is that what they're calling politeness these days)?

In the particular context under discussion (a cop who has more important things to think about in the particular situation under discussion), yes. A cop who arrives at an accident scene is under no obligation to say "good job" to a bystander who called 911. Just saying "Move" to the bystander if he wants him out of the way is not impoliteness; it's prudence in a situation that, to the cop, is not yet under control.

surely they have much better things to do than spending hours engaging in an egregious miscarriage of justice to flatter their own notions of self-importance

But you weren't talking about that. You were talking specifically about the cop just saying "Move" to the bystander. The bystander not complying immediately escalates his status, in the cop's mind, from "bystander" to "potential threat". That's why the bystander got arrested.

I certainly agree that the cops took things much too far after they arrested and cuffed the bystander. But again, you weren't talking about that; you were talking specifically about what happened before the arrest. Big difference.

(i.e. that they deserve unquestioning obedience even in non-urgent situations)

You were talking specifically about what happened at the accident scene. An accident scene is not a non-urgent situation.

> Just saying "Move" to the bystander if he wants him out of the way is not impoliteness; it's prudence in a situation that, to the cop, is not yet under control.

> [reordered to address two points at once] An accident scene is not a non-urgent situation.

There is a conceivable circumstance under which taking a second to explain/pander would be the less prudent road: the bystander is interfering so egregiously with the EMTs that the extra second poses a plausible risk to the patient. Of course, in this situation the correct response is a shove, followed by a placating explanation. Under no circumstance was a single order to "move" followed by an arrest the fastest or most probably successful method of addressing the situation.

There's a reason why most cops are polite, professional, and (comparatively) slow to escalate: it's the best way to encourage in-kind behavior. It's pragmatic.

> But you weren't talking about [the later arrest, you were talking about saying "Move"]

I didn't switch subjects. I used the officers' later jerk-off behavior to refute the excuse you were trying to make (they had more important things to think about). If they had more important things to think about, they wouldn't have gone and picked a fight.

Under no circumstance was a single order to "move" followed by an arrest the fastest or most probably successful method of addressing the situation.

What happened was more complicated than that. See below.

There's a reason why most cops are polite, professional, and (comparatively) slow to escalate: it's the best way to encourage in-kind behavior. It's pragmatic.

And there's a reason why prudent citizens are careful when dealing with cops, particularly cops that appear not to be aware of the pragmatic truth you have just stated: it's the best way to avoid having the cops decide that you're a target instead of a bystander. It should have been obvious after the first interaction with the aggressive cop, when she told him to leave immediately, that further interaction was wasted on her.

I didn't switch subjects...If they had more important things to think about, they wouldn't have gone and picked a fight

Yes, you are switching subjects. When the cop told the bystander to "Move", she wasn't picking a fight--that didn't happen until later. At that point the cop did nothing else but order the bystander to move. And that, the time of the first order, is when the cop had more important things to think about.

It was not until later, after the bystander had (a) not moved, (b) been told a second time to move and not moved, and (c) said that the other bystander, whom the cops had pulled away from the injured woman (I suspect because they weren't sure whether he was helping her or trying to do something else, like rob her--remember this all happened very quickly and chaotically), was his friend, that the cops actually arrested him. Then they picked a fight.

> ... [if] the bystander is interfering so egregiously with the EMTs that the extra second poses a plausible risk to the patient

Dude, you need to take a CPR class or something. Emergency response is HARD. If you're the EMT, you don't know if the patient has a ruptured soft organ, low blood pressure, or clotting problems, ICP, arrhythmia, etc etc etc. In five seconds they can go from lucid to passed out and then what seemed like a routine stop gets deadly serious and you're in trouble.

You need to work fast but you need to work ultra smart. One missed sign or wrong move could ruin a patient's life.

The whole time you're working you're trying to keep tons small bits of information in your head (ask about allergies, ask about illness, ask about prescriptions, ask about family history, any Battle's sign, how was cap reflow? Any heart problems? is the patient losing orientation? more neck soreness, did I miss a C-spine hairline? I need to move her shoulders but it might cripple her. if I could just get some friggin ROOM here. Can I ignore the bruise on the thigh? Did I hear wheezing? ... etc ).

Now do this when you have drunk people milling about, talking back to the police right over you.

My point, because you don't seem to get it: every accident scene is an urgent situation until the patient has been transported. Every interference is egregious. Every. last. one.

You seem to think that cops and EMTs have superhuman abilities to diagnose patients, psychoanalyze bystanders, and predict the future, all while while chatting amiably and stroking egos. It's bizarre.

(I did ski patrol for a few years so I got a taste of what EMTs do every day. I am in awe.)

I need to move her shoulders but it might cripple her.

This brings up another point that struck me about the situation as described in the article. The author's friend was "supporting the back" of the injured woman: why? Why not just let her lie still, with something soft under her head, and something else under her feet to keep them elevated, until the EMTs got there? The fact that one bystander was holding the woman up might in itself have struck the cops (and the firemen) as unusual, not to mention a possible cause of damage to the patient.

The cops' account is in the police report: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/779439/police_report_ann...

I have to ask.. why does it matter?

I find the sequence of events the author was subjected to is impossible to justify with any conceivable amount of being "smug and obnoxious". This is behavior that should be reserved for dangerous, combative criminals (and probably not even then), certainly not bystanders who are merely annoying.

Read the police report (linked in other commments). Author was buzzed and buzzing around, and creatively left a few important details out of his story.

(not saying the police report is 100% of the story either of course)

What makes you think that the police didn't creatively add a few details to the story?

Police brutality will never go away unless the the police themselves hold officers accountable for such actions. Sadly, they just don't, or give them a slap on the wrist when they cross the line.

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