m4st4 wrote: ↑

May 31st, 2020, 9:10 pm

I don't think anyone here's ready to propose that every single cop on this earth is dirty without sounding mighty silly, because of course it ain't.

I don't think anyone here is genuinely like that I agree. However, I can understand Law's frustration, if you go on social media that kind of rhetoric is overwhelming, "all cops are evil" etc. That has to feel terrible and emotionally draining if you're a good person doing an incredibly stressful job the best to your ability. All that said I have seen despicable police brutality this weekend caught on video and I believe a large reason for so much destruction is police initiating violence. That said, I also support Law and the cops in NJ who seemingly handled everything the right way.*gasp* Nuance people.

As everyone's said, I'm not hating all cops. Neither is Vader. Or M4. Or Teddy. Or Allstar. I was just saying that inexcusable actions like driving a car into a crowd of people should not be defended, the way Law was implying.

People are begging for armed police officers to be understood and shown compassion because of the fear and panic they're undergoing right now, while black individuals (at all times) are expected to act in total and complete peace when their lives get threatened and endangered.

Should the cop have turned away from the angry mob of protesters? If the alternative is the potential murder of a dozen people by driving your car into them, I'd say...yeah. You turn away. Protect lives. The crowd in that video was not visibly violent up *until* the point the cop drove into them. Then they began to fight and jump the car. Because they were almost killed out of spite. And the fact that we're having to debate right now that obviously abhorrent decision is literally why people are so angry.

If they reversed, they would have reversed into more people.

Idk man, in that video I see a whole hell of a lot more people in front of those cars than behind them.

Honestly, we should be criticising the police more and also more often because they are accountable to the public and if the population is protesting police violence it's very clear where the change must be enacted. The police as an institution has refused to reform itself, nor have police officers been arrested most of the time when they kill somebody, let alone convicted. And when people protest police violence, you get the police threatening to stop doing their jobs that they are being paid to do, to protect people, simply because they cannot stand the criticism. It does not matter if individual cops are good cops if the institution refuses to change in any significant way. For instance, why is it that police are allowed to use tear gas when it is banned in warfare by multiple international treaties? It's mostly used to suppress protests. This is just one aspect of the problem, namely with regard to the kind of equipment the police are allowed to use, as they also get surplus military equipment. You could for example stop giving them surplus military equipment.

The national guard and MPD shooting paint canisters at people on their own front porches and yelling 'light em up' is also very clearly not about safety but rather about intimidating the population.

Mayor DeBlasio's comments are a disgrace. The police could have done a number of things instead of driving through the protesters.

Agreed. The Mayor should be ashamed.

They can't even admit and decry police brutality at the police brutality protests. In the scenarios where people are getting shot on their own porches/getting run over in the streets, the lack of interference from fellow good police officers is very telling.

Bill DeBlasio has been a fucking clown for a long time. Literally everyone hates him. Left, right and center.

The Washington Post - Trump led month of distractions and grievances
Trump has 'been over coronavirus for a long time,' adviser says

Bacon wrote: ↑

May 31st, 2020, 9:52 pm

People are begging for armed police officers to be understood and shown compassion because of the fear and panic they're undergoing right now, while black individuals (at all times) are expected to act in total and complete peace when their lives get threatened and endangered.

This is what really gets me. People want us to understand and empathize with police officers who, when faced with difficult decisions, turn to violence, because of the human element - everyone makes mistakes, this is a stressful job, you never know how you would act if you were in their place, etc...

Has this level of compassion ever been shown to black people when they’re in situations when their lives are in danger? When a black person dies at the hands of police, god forbid we find out they had made a single mistake!! Why do we always say “he shouldn’t have run”, implying he must have run for a reason, as in a reason for the police to shoot him, not that reason being him scared for his life. Why do we say that black people can’t run, can’t resist, they can’t give off even an ounce of what a cop MIGHT perceive as threatful, because they are so fragile even a slightest movement can make them kill you? Why don’t people rush to humanize black people in situations that are extremely stressful for them? Why is the burden to always be able to conduct themselves properly ALWAYS on them?

And for the record, I respect Law despite our disagreements, and I am not a cop hater myself. I don’t condone mindless and unnecessary violence. I don’t like that I even need to clarify this. But some jobs. You can’t have “bad apples”. You wouldn’t expect surgeons to have “bad apples” among them. Or airplane pilots. Or firefighters.

Ruth wrote: ↑

June 1st, 2020, 3:59 am

And for the record, I respect Law despite our disagreements, and I am not a cop hater myself. I don’t condone mindless and unnecessary violence. I don’t like that I even need to clarify this. But some jobs. You can’t have “bad apples”. You wouldn’t expect surgeons to have “bad apples” among them. Or airplane pilots. Or firefighters.

The problem is that our brains are so susceptible to conditioning and programming that police inevitably and involuntarily develop moral callouses as their prejudices grow and their resentment amplifies.

There was a groupthink study of a school classroom where they divided people into groups. Within minutes, people in each were more likely to believe falsehoods within their own groups while more likely to doubt truths said by the other groups.

Additionally, our bodies are quite bad at judging what's causing a negative response in our mind and body. IE, you get the flu right after eating a particular kind of food (say, Chinese food) and vomit a lot, your body will develop a (usually temporary but not always) aversion to Chinese food. This is also exactly how we respond to fear and trauma. I've had PTSD twice. The first time from my car crash. I should actually be scared of drunk drivers, but 10 years later cars and tight spaces on the road give me massive anxiety.

Take these two points and add them together. Only, instead of these benign scenarios you are faced with life and death. And everyone hates you. And you have to will your brain not to hold it against particular groups of people when you've been shot at or fellow cops or friends have been shot at or killed. Yet, the programming innate in our brains and bodies over millions of years of evolution is strong and rarely broken. Few of us can really withstand that level of constant fear, no matter the training.

Add onto this, police are often traumatized in the course of duty. To get too real: my dad had to comfort a father whose son committed suicide in front of him, having pointed a shotgun back at his own face. It was a mess. The still-shitty mental health support afforded cops is still relatively new. My dad had to carry that burden mostly alone for decades. How does that influence behavior? Trauma and stress have been proven to literally rewire how our brains process information and deal with emotion.

My point is not "empathy for the police." My point is that it's a soul-sucking profession, and the very nature of it can turn the best men cruel with enough time and enough shitty, traumatic experiences. It is also exactly why "Us vs Them" bullshit comes about. People innately fight for their groups. If you think you don't, you're full of shit. Every human alive does. And we flock to who understands and supports us. Nobody understands or supports cops. They're hated. So of course so many cops over-value protecting officers and under-value accountability. It's built into the ballgame of how brains work for that to be the case. It takes a lot of hard work and a lot of reshaping our we think and feel and behave to fight those kinds of impulses. It is the single most important lens to gain better understanding and insight into not only the cancer at the hard of police brutality, but also the solutions. Basically, it's fucking inescapable unless we treat this through the clarity of science and behavior.

What are those solutions? Dumping funding into far better training and most importantly: constant psychological support. We need a powerful support system to counter-program the prejudice and anger-amplifying experiences. That will cost a lot of money. But...police are already overfunded, and the funding goes towards weapons and toys of destruction. Therefore, they don't get the funding where they need it and the cycle continues.

This was really fucking long and what Cilogy would call "full Vader" but this is all I've been thinking about for days and had to get it off my chest. I hope it's of value to anyone reading this thread.


-Vader

2014 Ukrainian revolution - Wikipedia

The Ukrainian Revolution of 2014 took place in Ukraine in February 2014, when a series of violent events involving protesters, riot police, and unknown shooters in the capital, Kiev, culminated in the ousting of the elected Ukrainian President, Viktor Yanukovych, and the overthrow of the Ukrainian Government.

Yanokovych was the Russia backed leader of Ukraine that shared the same consultant/campaign manager with Trump in Paul Manafort. Haven't quite reached the step of revolution... All in the middle of a pandemic when folks shouldn't be clumping together so closely, mind you.

Five more months until the election is supposed to take place.









Crowd sizes Trump wouldn't want to brag about.

To try and turn this into an anti-cop conversation and all about individuals, instead of it really being about the lack of oversight and a broken system that continuously allows injustice to occur, is truly one of the more mind-boggling misdirections that I've seen in a while.